


Rumplestiltskin's Shelter for Wayward Children

by MemoryCrow



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Changelings, Dysfunctional Family, Friendship/Love, Magic, Multi, Orphanage, Orphans, Pack Family, Secrets, Team as Family, Teen Pregnancy, Teenagers, money issues, ouat AU, outsiders - Freeform, weird babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-02-26 20:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 57,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18724372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemoryCrow/pseuds/MemoryCrow
Summary: 'Some of these kids drifted on. Some disappeared in ways more thorough, and a suspicious, baleful town-eye was cast upon Rumplestiltskin, who shrugged.Who knew what parentless children got up to in the wide and wicked world?Others stayed, where they knew there was - at least – a warm bed and regular meals. These things, of course, came with a price.'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Aside from Rumplestiltskin and Killian Jones, most of the OUAT characters are envisioned as teenagers. Definitely an alternative universe tale, this story takes place on the outskirts of an invented town called Epiphany and in a place that is Other.

Rumplestiltskin’s Shelter for Wayward Children was located outside of the city limits of Epiphany, and thus not subject to the outrageous city property taxes. It was an estate that looked more like a fortress or castle and clung to the edge of a high cliff that overlooked a cold, restless sea.

The surrounding grasses were cropped short by tough, wiry little goats, eyes mad with an inner bedevilment. Great, craggy rocks hunkered about in abundance. Trees were stunted and leaned permanently westward due to the wind that came from the east, over the sea, constant and bitterly salty. Mostly cold. The sky seemed always gray, no matter how high the sun.

Children were left at the shelter, willy-nilly. Some were left at the ground’s iron gates in basinets or prams; in a few cases in cardboard boxes or dresser drawers. These were the little ones, and they stared with eyes that seemed too observant, babies that did not cry and spooked others with their wakeful, silent presence. At times, babies arrived with eyes that were narrowed and shrewd; small, wizened things. They were like tiny, old people, secretive and sly.  It was suggested they were changelings.

Others were left on the steps on the shelter, a broad sweep of chiseled river rock that narrowed to the heavy, darkened front door. They were delivered by Social Services, The Department of Children and Family Services or sometimes by police escort. No coats, no luggage; Older kids in second hand clothes. Boys, girls, the stable and less stable.

Some of these kids drifted on. Some disappeared in ways more thorough, and a suspicious, baleful town-eye was cast upon Rumplestiltskin, who shrugged.

Who knew what parentless children got up to in the wide and wicked world?

Others stayed, where they knew there was - at least – a warm bed and regular meals. These things, of course, came with a price.

 

 

 

There was often a club, a clique of boys who called themselves wolves, a wolf pack. Rumplestiltskin called them Mordreds or Dracos. They came and went, numbers in the pack shifting; the current number was two.

One, it seemed, was truly growing into a rough, canis lupus figure; this was the leader, Hyde. The others, passing through or current, were all posturing and bravado. They were snot-nosed, pimple-faced and short sighted. They were mean to girls, dismissive of babies and they believed they were secretly disrespectful of Rumplestiltskin.

However, he was aware.

The Wolves roamed the vast and gloomy halls of the shelter, a moldering, melancholy structure of three stories and many rooms. They prowled its semi-barren landscape that sprouted gorse and witchgrass and gnarled, malcontent trees. They hung on the elaborate, wrought iron fence that enclosed the property and howled at passers-by. They let their tongues loll out, panting at pretty – or simply well-endowed women, old enough to be their mothers.

They each shared a particular hunger for mothers. They wanted to _eat_ them, save for Hyde’s young protégé, Peter. Peter wanted to suck them dry.

 

 

 

 

One didn’t typically think of Rumplestiltskin as jolly, yet he rather was. It could be easily missed, as so often the jolly were seen as rounded, comfortably cushioned. Women were pleasingly plump and men had snug and cuddlesome bellies. Rosy cheeks and warmth, a generosity of spirit.

Rumplestiltskin was gaunt. He was a bag of bones, like a hungry, ragged-eared cat. A smallish man with hooded – some might say sunken – eyes and a cadaverous aspect. He dressed in formal attire and was evocative of funeral directors and probate attorneys. He walked with a glossy, black cane and his hair was a touch too long, feathering about his nape and jaw. It suggested a man going to seed, leggy and unkempt despite his fine attire. He’d missed a pruning and now straggled wildly, without flower.

It was said, based on nothing like fact, that he was a widower, a man who’d tragically lost the love of his life, possibly a child as well, and now his heart was a dead lump in his chest. On the other hand, perhaps he’d killed his sweetheart, for fun and/or profit. Or he’d killed her because he was a little off, a bit funny in the head. Another rumor was that a misplaced wife wandered empty rooms in a shut-away wing of the estate. She meandered like a bride in tatters, a Dickensian Miss. Havisham; she dragged heavy chains and called for her baby. Imaginative sorts swore they saw her, escaped and walking the cliff’s edge.

Yet, for all the gloom and oddity, Rumplestiltskin _was_ jolly. His spirit was neither generous nor warm, his belly was concave and lacking a cuddlesome nature. There might be all manner of dead or distressed women in his dark past or on the periphery of his present. Still, he had a snarky smile at the ready. His eyes danced and his small frame bristled with a repressed energy, desired acts not yet carried out, but fondly mused upon.

His joy was selfish and mean and terribly dear to himself. The dark corners, the cobwebs too high up to dust, the murk of the unthinkable crawlspace beneath the shelter and the uncertain nature of the attic’s vaguely bestial scent all caused him to feel jolly. His cane tapped. He sang, “Hello, dearie!” to children in his path, taking pleasure in their fright and discomfort. He often carried about one or another of the babies, a-jiggle on the sharp ridge of his hip.

“Is it really a changeling?” asked an ever-rejected girl called Emma. She narrowed her green eyes at the narrowed, affronted eyes of the baby. Her hair was like a golden-blonde horse’s mane and she dressed like a boy.

Smiling his amused and unpleasant smile, Rumplestiltskin answered, “Who in _this_ world can say, dearie?”

 

 

 

 

The older children in residence were Emma, Mary Margaret, Lacey, Ruby, Peter, Jefferson, Victor, David and Hyde.

Hyde was a wolf. He was largely without a pack, but Peter followed after him like a shadow and was tutored to wolfhood.

Hyde was a menace to Mary Margaret, a solemn, dark haired girl who was his own age, yet he’d identified her as a mother. He instinctively left Emma alone. He leered at coltish and preternaturally sexy Ruby, who was – nevertheless – painfully shy, vulnerable to his variety of sniffing and pawing.

He’d once said something lewd and suggestive to Lacey… She’d blown a pink bubble with her bubblegum, her blue eyes calmly assessing him over its fleshy sheen. She drew the bubble back into her mouth with a cracking _pop!_ Upon which she’d kicked him in the gonads while he was still hypnotized by the actions of her eyes and mouth.

He now made a wide, snarling circle around Lacey, leaving her be even though she provoked him with short skirts and neon nail polish, a strange taunt in her fingerless, lace gloves.

She sure as hell wasn’t a mother. Hyde could scent out her future; she was no mother at all.

 

 

 

Rumplestiltskin was magical. The community at large, the better part of Epiphany remained ignorant of this fact, though he did little to hide it. People didn’t want to know difficult things. This was a truth Rumplestiltskin had learned early, and it became even more true, and frankly useful, when he functioned to relieve the town of a difficult burden.

Be the burden one of the neglected elderly, the neglected homeless or the abandoned and unwanted children in his care, people simply did not want to know. It was dealt with; enough said.

One could get away with murder, with all sorts of mayhem.

The children knew about the magic. Even the babies knew; perhaps especially the babies. The dogs and cats, the birds who came for daily crumbs, the gnarled trees and the unseen things in both attic and crawlspace; all were aware of the magic that emanated from Rumplestiltskin and which tip-toed all over the estate and its grounds.

The magic ran things. It kept up a loose order and something of a routine. Because of its overall usefulness, Rumplestiltsin kept only one employee.

His employee, Killian Jones, held an ill-defined position. He was darkly, it had been noted, _devilishly_ handsome; and it was proposed he might be around just for looks. One liked to have a gloweringly handsome fellow about a sprawling, spooky estate; it was aesthetically pleasing. It was mostly Hyde who said this, in more basic wording and with openly sexual inuendo. He mostly said it to Peter, who stared at Hyde with knowing, bottle-green eyes, not unlike the weirder babies.

Henchman, security guard, enforcer… Janitor? Butler? Personal Shopper? All and none of these things might apply to Killian Jones, who was most often a handyman. He stalked the gloom. He let Hyde know he was watched and he kept a more furtive eye on the girls, whom he’d found to be more sneaky and clever than the boys.

Like Rumplestiltskin, he could be seen to carry a baby or two about, tucked into a strong arm and bounced on a hip while he made his rounds.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Emma shared a room with Mary Margaret, but her best friend was David. To David, she was loyal. To others, even those girls who seemed drawn to her, she remained vague and non-committal. She didn’t want to get close, for people were transient. They were almost universally untrustworthy.

She saw the goon, Killian, watching the girls when he thought he was invisible. She saw Rumplestiltskin smother a smile when innocent Mary Margaret was tripped by Hyde.

David was different. He was quiet and sweet-natured, and he looked after everyone. Unlike Emma, he extended himself, he got involved. Sometimes he was Killian’s shadow, making it his mission to keep the wolves in line. He comforted babies. He protected Emma.

Not that she needed protection; she could look after herself, even amongst Hyde and whatever canines he might recruit. Certainly, she could handle herself around that little jackass, Peter. She told David so.

Still, she was glad for him. The horrible fact was that she loved him, cursing herself for having such a weakness. She couldn’t help it… by the time she’d realized it, it was too late. She’d fallen hard and the complexities of being in love had launched her into a world that was ever more uncertain.

He was a serious boy, but quick to smile and laugh. His hair was the color of wheat and his eyes the color of a clear, blue sky. He was handsome in a soft way, but he wasn’t soft. He could beat the crap out of anyone who threatened those he cared for, those he protected. He could take a punch, stagger, and come back, swinging. He was hard-headed.

Emma would destroy anyone who hurt him. She didn’t speak it, it wasn’t her nature, but it seemed everyone knew. _Watch out- Emma would kill for that guy_. And the girls said, _Oh, she’d die for him_.

It made her feel peculiar, outside of herself, and she had the thought that both homicide and suicide, in a certain context, could be viewed as acts of love.

As she had the thought she looked up, her eyes pulled away from her own, inner vision. Rumplestiltskin was staring at her.

He smiled.

 

 

 

Ruby said, “Pretend you’re Channing Tatum.”

Lacey snorted. She was naked, and looked down at herself, her eyes making a statement of the obvious. Boobs and dickless bush; what exactly was Ruby hoping for?

“That’s retarded.” She looked back up at Ruby, who was also naked. They were both pale and goose-bumped, hiding and shivering in an unused room.

If anything, Ruby should be the guy. She was taller, more flat-chested, bigger boned. “How am I supposed to be Channing Tatum? Should I ask you read lines with me?”

“I don’t know.” Ruby said, a bit snappish. “Just… I guess, act guy-like. I’ll do the rest in my head.”

Act guy-like. Whatever. Lacey wondered if she should procure a ball-cap for these occasions. They were both in a mood. Both annoyed, generally and with each other. Lacey felt as if something squeamishly _female_ permeated the very air around them, and she was sick of it. Sick of girl-feelings, girl-energy. She was sick of her inability to stop seeking out this playing-at-sex game with Ruby, the one person she’d known long enough for this sort of thing to have evolved.

They were both secretive about it. Each resented the other for her own need, and each was afraid the other would leave her behind. Find a boy and grow out _of let’s play pretend_.

Everyone saw them as best friends. Well, maybe they were. They’d certainly come to know one another.

Lacey’s thoughts were roiling and dark and she wanted them to shut-up, already. She wanted her mind emptied of all but the feeling she had when she and Ruby did their secret thing. She felt antsy about it, worried the game would be thwarted.

Like Ruby, she wanted to imagine. She was wet, simply from waiting for it… her mind at large, fueled by her body. She was uncomfortable with the wetness, and with Ruby’s, for that matter. She didn’t find another girl gross or disgusting, none of the things some said of same sex pairings. But… the excess of _girl_. The thick angst of hormones or whatever. _Ugh_. There was also a sneaky feeling, low in her belly and flu-like in her limbs of her period coming on. Such joy.

Just – bleh. She had half a mind to go wrangle one of those idiot boys and cast off her virginity, already. What purpose did it serve? It was as ambiguous and un-usable as her soul, although both – in stories – were used as currency.

Lacey chewed her bottom lip. Getting started was the trickiest part with Ruby. They were girlfriends, but they weren’t _girlfriends_ … it was clear that, in the matter of playing pretend, they were using one another. There never seemed to be an easy, affectionate way to slip into it.

Fuck it. She always had to be the one to go first, making Ruby the one with the power. She always had to initiate, admit her desire. Fine.

She laid down on the blanket they’d secreted to their hide-away, a room full of boxes and musty smells. There were spider tracks in the dust and mouse droppings in the corners… it wasn’t ideal. She spread her legs, desperately needing the grind of Ruby’s thigh to her wet and achy parts, desperately needing Ruby’s tongue against her own. Skin against skin, nerve endings firing, her thoughts soaring off into fantasy, driven by the escalating, sharp pleasure-pain between her legs.

She desperately needed to get out of herself and out of the clever and complete trap that was her life.

“Okay.” She said. “I’m Channing Tatum. I think you’re hot. Come on.”

 

 

 

 

Squatting, Victor poked at the deceased squirrel with a stick. It was stiff and strange, devoid of life and movement. Its little mouth was partly open, its eyes squeezed shut. It was a sad thing.

“Don’t do that.” Jefferson said.

He stood over Victor, hands deep in his pockets. A toy rabbit was draped over one wrist, held firm to his thigh, legs dangling. He was too pretty for the dull, barren landscape.

“It can’t feel it.” Victor said, reasonably. “It’s gone.”

As he said it, it sent a shiver down his neck and back. The squirrel was clearly present; he poked it. Its solid, stiff mass resisted his poking. But it was true; the squirrel was gone. He was looking at something that wasn’t there.

“Poor thing.” Jefferson said.

 

 

 

 

Every word Hyde uttered, every breath he took and every sigh he exhaled was filtered through a deep growl. It had begun at puberty. His voice never squeaked or cracked, toying with both boyhood and manhood. It just dropped. It was low; the endless, hard gravel of his restless and prowling anger, a full, expansive thing in his chest.

Other boys joked, speculating as to the largeness of his balls in conjunction with his rumbling baritone. There was actually some truth to their speculation… a comedy of anatomy that pointed to Hyde as the most manly of all; the Alpha Wolf.

Then came the body hair.

Despite his age, he was no longer a boy. At least, not in voice or body. Chest hair, pubic hair that sprawled nearly from hip-bone to hip-bone… the hair on his arms and legs darkened, a soft fur, and he shaved every day. Still, his chin, jaw and neck were blue by day’s end. His jaw felt like sandpaper.

He allowed long and wicked sideburns to grow in. He roughed his dark hair forward with his fingers, rarely visiting it with a comb. He glowered from beneath dark brows.

He terrified the older women at whom he howled. He relished their discomfort. He stood, wide-legged in his ragged jeans and let them get a good look at his bulge. His t-shirt was tight to his body and strained at the biceps. He smelled of dirt, cigarettes and sex, yet he was a virgin.

He didn’t wear underwear. It partly circumstance, for he’d never had much. Money spent on socks made sense, but underwear seemed redundant.

Once his voice transformed into a deep and monstrous thing within his body, he abstained from underwear on principal.

“Show ‘em your meat.” He advised Peter. It was what wolves should do, aggressive and proud.

In contrast to himself, Peter was almost a girl. It could be a little disturbing. Peter wore underwear; tightie-whities that had gone slack and sad with age, yellowish in color, no longer tight nor white. Hyde made fun of them, snapping at tired elastic or yanking the seat into a vicious wedgie, bisecting Peter’s narrow ass and tormenting his balls. Still, he had to admit that little Peter was packing some serious weaponry in the babyish, kangaroo pouch.

Peter was the smallest of the kids at the shelter. He was a sylph, an elf; he was all ears. But he was sly and strange and rather dark in nature, and therefore well suited to being a wolf. He was Hyde’s biggest fan. He followed Hyde around and took his abuse.

This, too, was a little disturbing.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Rumplestiltskin shooed them all into the out-of-doors. “Go. _Go_. Get a good airing. Get your stink blown off. Be wholesome children.”

He smiled, the crocodile curve of his sharp grin showing that he fostered no true notions of anyone’s wholesomeness. Standing beside him, taller and more devastating than Hyde could hope to become, Killian Jones raised a brow. It echoed Rumplestiltskin’s smile. Killian’s arms were crossed over his chest, and there was a glint of the thing all of the children looked upon with morbid fascination, sometimes fear.

The hook.

Killian’s left hand was missing, severed very neatly at the wrist, it appeared. Like Luke Skywalker…. One moment, there; the next, nothing. Ghost hand. In its place was a gleaming, solid and sharp steel hook.

_Wicked_ , growled Hyde.

“Couldn’t they give him something more… bionic?” Victor wondered.

The girls were mostly put off. If not for the hook, Killian Jones might be the man of their dreams. Certainly, his avatars seemed to populate their trashy novels and the subsequent fantasies. He looked every part the rogue, the scoundrel. He was the tall, dark and handsome rake who ripped every virgin’s bodice and climbed up tower walls, a knife clenched in his startling, white teeth. His eyes were the blue of stormy seas; they were filled with the drama of flashing electricity.

But… the _hook_. What an interruption. It interfered with the idea of a full embrace, of _hands_ , eagerly roaming over curves. It seemed dangerous; you could put an eye out. And, without it… there was a collective shudder. Was there just a stump? Would you want it to touch you? Did it _feel_?

Only Emma was undisturbed by the hook, but she was also unaffected by the movie star-good looks of Killian Jones. When the other girls, (surprisingly, even Mary Margaret), gushed over him _– did you see him working in the garden? Shirtless_! – Emma shrugged. He was okay. He was no David. At least he seemed more intelligent than Hyde.

But, he would never give a straight answer about the hook. What happened, Emma couldn’t help but wonder? _Did_ something happen, or was he just born that way? She’d seen such birth defects, congenital anomalies when living in foster homes… kids born with nubs at their shoulders or feet that were clubbed and didn’t want to work. Looking at them, she’d been caught between compassion and a muted sort of horror.

What she really wondered was; Was Killian one of Rumplestiltskin’s? Was that their connection, the truth behind Killian’s mysterious employment? Maybe Killian had been a lost, homeless thing, just like the rest of them. No family. Maybe Rumplestiltskin had taken him in, and this was payment. It was still unclear how any of them would pay their various debts with Rumplestiltskin, yet the feeling that he would exact payment hovered over them all.

She would probably never know. Killian answered her questions gamely, his charming smile lighting up his deep blue eyes. But, his answers changed regularly, while he kept a straight face.

“It was in the circus ring, love. A lion took his due. Terrible rascals, lions.”

“You see, this is why they tell you to keep your hands in cart on roller coasters, at _all_ times. “

“I welched-out on a witch’s payment. Don’t _ever_ welch out on a witch’s payment.”

“It was an evil hand, mate. It had to go.”

 

 

 

 

Time spent being wholesome in fresh air was an idea that was a little overblown. The air was likely fresh enough, but it was saturated by a deep gloom. Also, doom. The sun could never gain a foothold at the shelter. No one ever tanned… they were all like pale worms, pulled out of a sunless underground environment, wriggling and blind.

Victor expressed concern to Rumplestiltskin that they would all have Vitamin D deficiencies.  He was full of such concerns, which he shared with Rumplestiltskin and then looked at his guardian in consternation.

Would Rumplestiltskin be doing anything about it?

He fixed his patron with a worried brow, a bird-like, sideways stare. He made Rumplestiltskin sigh and mutter to himself. He moved along with an irritated tapping of his cane and murmured complaints that an escapee from the Von Trapp family was on the loose in the shelter, ever his hound.

Children needed protein, one of the building blocks of _life_ , for crying out loud. It was important for developing brains, and brains were very important, indeed. The shelter’s steady diet of starch and Jello needed serious improvement.

Antioxidants. Micronutrients. Phytochemicals. Where were all of these elements? They were missing, in fact. Meanwhile, free radicals roamed all over, causing chaos. Growth could be stunted, just look at Peter. It was appalling.

Often, Victor made his appeals on behalf of the girls, though he spent very little time around them. Rumplestiltskin never seemed all that concerned about whatever crap befell the boys. _Go away, boy. You bother me. Walk it off_. No matter what sad state Peter was in, Rumplestiltskin looked at his chipmunk-cheeky face and sticking-out ears and called him Alfred E. Newman. Often, Alfred E.

Victor asked, “Do you want Mary Margaret to get scurvy? Do you want Lacey to get rickets?”

Rumplestiltskin’s fingertips pressed together, as if he played _here’s the church, here’s the steeple_. Then he spread out his hands and complained to Killian, “Who let this child read? Find the boy something to occupy his time.”

Then, “Come along, lad.” Killian said.

And Victor would be led away with no sense of having accomplished anything and likely on his way to some nasty and regrettable chore.

There were small triumphs, however. Orange juice showed up at the breakfast table, as well as the occasional egg. It was small, but it was something.

One day, a bottle of Vitamin D capsules appeared on Victor’s scarred-up, wooden desk. Multi Vitamins for everyone would have made more sense, he couldn’t help but think. Was it not obvious? But, still. It was a rough and mean life they were all living; he took gifts where they were offered.

He shared his small treasure with Jefferson, who was his roommate. “Here you go.” He happily and pedantically offered a dusty-smelling capsule. “Your bones will thank you.”

 

 

 

 

The Wolves stalked the perimeter of the shelter’s grounds, and Jefferson cast a wary eye. He hated Hyde.

“Hate is a strong word.” Said Mary Margaret, whom Jefferson considered sainted. He believed in her goodness, but also felt sardonic about it. To Victor, he referred to Mary Margaret as Our Most Beloved. Sometimes just Saint Mary.

Yes, ‘hate’ was a strong word, and he meant it. If Hyde’s overgrown body washed up on the rocks, far below the cliffs upon which they all precariously perched, Jefferson would not mourn. One less fuckhead in the world.

Hyde was one of _those_ … not just a bully in the brute, physical sense, menacing everyone with his size and frigging body hair. He also had a sort of mental bullying he liked to practice. He honed right in on a weakness, a shame, and then picked at it, endlessly. Publicly and loudly. Privately and horribly. He allowed for no rest.

It didn’t help that Jefferson made it easy for him. Try as he might, he couldn’t hide his weaknesses. He was an obvious target, glowing like neon.

For one, he couldn’t give up his rabbit. He’d tried hard, but the feeling of it was excruciating. Unbearable. His body shook and he cried… it was so embarrassing. Separation anxiety, Victor diagnosed. Victor knew so much crap. He had a few beat-up books he toted around in an olive-drab bookbag, all of a non-fiction variety. _Improve the mind_ , Victor tapped the side of his head with his forefinger.

Jefferson couldn’t really relate. It was for sure his mind needed improving, but in ways that seemed more urgent than academia. And if one was going to lug books hither and yon, they should be something _good_. They should be stories, not real, befucked life.

He supposed he’d had his rabbit since babyhood… he couldn’t imagine that anyone had ever _given_ him anything. It was a stuffed toy. A firm oval of a body with a faded, red heart where a belly-button should be. It had a rabbit head with embroidered eyes and long, floppy ears. Its front legs were short and its back legs were long and dangling; a rag-doll rabbit. He called it Simon.

It was absurd for him to carry Simon around. He knew it. Jesus, it was retarded. He may as well girlie-up his voice and holler out, “Yoo hoo! Hyde, honey!” _Honey Bunny_.

It had taken everything he had, _everything_ , to stop sucking his thumb. To stop laying his head on his folded arms at his desk in school, trying to hide the desperate, anxious sucking. He’d slept with his right hand under his pillow, hoping his thumb wouldn’t find its way into his mouth during sleep.

The rabbit was asking too much. He just couldn’t do without it, and – perversely – he felt that Simon couldn’t do without him. He scolded himself that Simon was an inanimate object, but then furtively projected the thought; _I didn’t mean it_. He was overcome with the horror that Simon would feel abandoned if left behind.

Hyde, Rumplestiltskin, Killian… they would all just have to fuck off, that’s what. People needed to leave him alone and stop telling him what to do.

But, lord. It made things difficult, his rabbit. None of the girls carried around stuffed toys or dolls, although Lacey’s purse was made like an owl. It was cool. Mary Margaret, Our Most Beloved, suggested that Jefferson give Simon to one of the babies. He’d looked at her, eyes wide and appalled. He could almost see her halo. He’d held Simon tighter; the babies were ghastly.

Even Peter, little and girlish, managed to collect things of a more masculine and sort of grown up nature. A stolen lighter in his pocket. A keychain like one of those naked ladies on the mud-flaps of trucks. Yet he had no key and nothing to lock.

Simon stayed, lest Jefferson lose his shit. It meant dealing with the non-stop torment of Hyde, whom he hated. Cat calls from Peter, which was really too much to take. That little shit. Jefferson was sure he could put an excellent whupping on Peter, but there was the certainty that Hyde would appear to exact revenge.

Hyde called him a bed-wetter, which he _wasn’t_. Hyde offered his dick as a pacifier, a substitute for the abandoned thumb. He said it in front of the girls, and their curious eyes made Jefferson too tongue tied to say anything back. Mortifyingly, he blushed. Now everyone thought he wanted to suck Hyde’s dick, and he _did not_.

“Don’t let him get to you.” Victor said.

How did Victor do it? He wasn’t the clear target that Jefferson was… he managed to get through each day without clinging to toys or struggling to overcome a serious thumb-sucking habit. But, he was pretty weird. Certainly, he qualified as a nerd. In his paleness, eyebrows nearly non-existent, he could look like a surprised egg.

He just didn’t seem to care what others thought. Hyde made his pacifier remark to Victor, and Victor smiled in return.

“Aw, thanks brother. That’s so sweet. But, nah. I’m trying to quit.”

The words flowed out with astounding ease, casual and unconcerned. Hyde seemed to miss their subtle mockery. It amazed Jefferson. The easy sort of response seemed to click with Hyde… it seemed like something he recognized. He smile-scowled back at Victor and moved on. Jefferson felt sure that, if he’d said it, he’d come away bruised ad bloody, maybe faced with the horror of wolf-dick.

Moments after Victor’s polite refusal, Hyde could be seen hanging down from a door frame, feet pulled up from the ground, ankles crossed. His t-shirt rode up, showing a flat, muscled and be-furred belly. He did an impressive pull-up, arm muscles bulging.

Grinning, Victor elbowed Jefferson. He said, “Look. Now he’s trying to show me his sexual prowess.”

Prowess. Jefferson looked at Victor. Who talked like that?

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Mary Margaret ran a small nursery for the babies. She’d sought permission from Rumplestiltskin, who waved his hand at her, dismissive. “Knock yourself out, dearie. Maybe it’ll keep the little boogers from being always underfoot.”

This was also Mary Margaret’s concern; care for the babies seemed haphazard and arbitrary. Rumplestiltskin’s magic did more of it that he did, himself, hands-on, and even that amounted to last-minute saves. One might come upon a bobbing, levitating baby, looking around in a quiet and curious manner. The magic had snatched it from falling to its death when it crawled from a third-floor landing.

Care was inconsistent. Reprehensible, in fact. Everyone knew babies needed love. Routine, structure, warmth. The shelter left much to be desired… What warmth could a jiggle at Rumplestiltskin’s bony hip offer? A pat of Kilian’s steely hook, which he sometimes waved back and forth, as a hypnotist’s pendulum, and the captivated eyes of babies followed.

Killian approached Mary Margaret, surrounded by a circle of her charges, all propped in highchairs and car-seats. Concluding – perhaps? – a sermon, she said, “And that’s why it’s good to share.”

Killian’s brow quirked, taking in the babies. Mary Margaret had a mixed audience. Some of the babies, those wide-eyed, old-soul types, looked to Mary Margaret with somber respect. _You are wise_ , said their faces. _We love you the best_.

But the others… the narrow-eyed beings of the sort he and Rumplestiltskin had to keep in line… they looked at Mary Margaret in frank derision. In disbelief, their small faces seemed to demand _; Are you kidding me with this_?

 

 

 

The speculation was that Peter was one of them; the weird babies, maybe changeling babies. Hyde believed it.

Peter didn’t announce it any more than did Rumplestiltskin, but -yes – he had magic. It popped out in small ways; his pen did his writing for him, while he paced and dictated. There was the sudden appearance of a chocolate chip cookie, whenever required.

It gave him an assurance, a swagger. It was the reason he was a wolf, despite being such a little guy, far more suited to fox, or even rat. While he followed Hyde about, loyal and submissive in a way that made Hyde foster untoward thoughts, Hyde nevertheless wondered if he was being groomed to a Killian sort of role. The protector of the magician, if that’s what Killian was.

Hell… Rumplestiltskin was also a little guy… with a big swagger.

 

 

 

 

Mary Margaret turned up pregnant. Everyone was shocked. They’d all thought it would be Lacey; even Lacey had made the assumption.

“What the devil?” said Killian, stunned.

Mary Margaret blushed pink, mortified by her news going public.

Sitting back, elbows on armrests and tapping fingertips together, Rumplestiltskin’s hooded eyes wandered over her, considering. She was her own best disguise. Her dark, pixie hair-cut, all clean lines. Her cap sleeves and modest neck-lines, her earnest compassion and seemingly endless capacity for hope, even within his dark and dank halls. She was, indeed, a good girl.

Nefarious thoughts surfaced regarding Hyde, who had broadcast to all that nothing would please him more than to sully Mary Margaret’s goodness. The little mother amongst the wild children; and now it was true.

Hyde said things like, “I want to suck her little titties, like a nursing baby.” Then Killian would whack the back of his head, hard, with a sizable book, an atlas or college dictionary.

Hyde’s words, no matter how juvenile, always sounded more vile and dire for his incessant growl. So complete, his voice tended to the monotone.

Mary Margaret squirmed beneath Rumplestiltskin’s scrutiny. He asked, “Who did this to you, dearie?”

She blushed harder, then balked. She was such a sweet, little thing. She always put Rumplestiltskin in mind of the small, heart-shaped candies sold for Valentine’s Day. He disliked their taste, but the image of tiny, pastel hearts printed with messages both loving and hopeful… each was a wee Mary Margaret.

However, she could become as set and stubborn as a mule. Her chin lifted and her jaw jutted. No doubt she’d read ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and now emulated Hester Prynne, another deceptively pristine figure.

It didn’t take long, however. Hester changed from a prim and well known goode wife to a solitary witch, hidden in the woods with her wild, pagan child. She protected her Man of God who could not resist the temptations of the flesh.

Upon that thought, Rumplestiltskin knew. He had no doubt of the parentage, yet preferred that Mary Margaret confess it.

But she said, “No one _did this_ to me.”

“Ah.” Rumplestiltskin nodded. “So then, we are looking into possibilities such as The Mighty Zeus. The Christian Lord. Have you noticed any showers of gold, or have you accepted lilies from any unexpected, winged persons?” To Killian, he asked, “Who else is known for such random and reckless seed-planting?”

Killian shrugged. “There’s a fair assortment of witches who specialize in foods that get girls in trouble. Or they enchant a body of water to do the same.”

“I’m not _in trouble_.” Mary Margaret’s head tilted. Though still a slip of a girl, her child little more than an apple seed, her hand went protectively to her belly. “Are you going to kick me out?” she asked, her voice a little breathless.

With a smile of a darker turn, Rumplestiltskin said, “I haven’t gotten that far in my thinking, dearie. But what I won’t have is the other girls looking to you as a romantic figure. We’re overrun with babies, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t need a tribe of underage fonts of fertility getting themselves knocked-up, trying to create the family they never had.”

Mary Margaret lowered her eyes. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” She murmured.

“So, we can agree there was an act. There was a mundane event which led to your current condition. You were not, in actual fact, visited by an angel of the lord. You haven’t recently accepted a pomegranate seed from a roadside hag.”

Mary Margaret said nothing, staring at the floor. Her breath came in little gasps. There was a hesitant tapping at Rumplestiltskin’s study door, then the door opened before he voiced his permission. David stepped into the room and Rumplestiltskin smiled with satisfaction.

David’s stride was uncertain, his cheeks as pink as Mary Margaret’s and his eyes were filled-to-spilling over with apprehension and guilt. Evidently, Killian had not made Rumplestiltskin’s earlier leap, for he muttered, “Oh, bloody hell.”

Rumplestiltskin merely fixed the boy with a stony stare, and David stammered, “The baby is mine. I’m the father.”

 

 

 

 

“Here you go, love.” Killian said.

He nudged Emma’s shoulder with his flask, then handed it to her. Her cat’s eyes, green and clear, widened.

“Are you serious?”

“Aye. Good for a broken heart. But if you become an alcoholic, I will deny this moment to the bitter end.”

He smiled at her. Uncertain, she took the flask and sniffed at it’s opening. She wrinkled her nose.

“Go on, lass. It takes the edge off.”

Lass, Emma thought. Well, what else would he think? She took a swig, then struggled to swallow it.

“How is it?” Killian asked.

Gasping once the unfamiliar taste and feel of rum was down her gullet, Emma blurted, “Really gross!” She grinned with false cheer and tried another swallow. Killian chuckled.

As she handed back the flask, Killian said, “The lad’s clearly blind, Emma, if he missed how you care for him and how brilliant you are. There’s someone better for you.”

Emma blushed, wondering at Killian’s sudden sweetness. She watched him walk away; tall, narrow, clad in all black. The hook was like an ever-present, small scythe. He was the crow who was Rumplestiltskin’s shadow.

Then she fell back into moroseness. She stared at the dour, crashing sea, beyond the melancholy lay of the land, the cliff’s raggedy edge. She’d thought David was different from everyone else, but she’d been blind. He and Mary Margaret… they were the same, cut from the same cloth. Sweet, protective, brave… always looking to do the right thing. Her own roommate, and she’d never seen the likeness; because Mary Margaret was a girl.

Emma couldn’t relate.

There was no one better for her. There was no one better than David. He hadn’t loved her back, because she couldn’t truly be a girl. Not like she was supposed to.

Not the way he wanted. Not like Mary Margaret.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Music blared from the room Lacey shared with Ruby, the door cracked open. There was a sense of gaudy brightness and confused activity that emanated from behind the door. It hooked Victor and reeled him in.

Victor was seen as dispassionate, quiet and very organized. Certainly, he was not perceived as any sort of threat by the girls. He was bookish, a pale and awkward thing who spoke in logic or sarcasm. He was odd, and sometimes self-important.

He couldn’t understand leaving things in disrepair, as seemed to have happened at the shelter. He fixed or improved what he could. He scrounged up replacement marbles for those missing from Chinese Checkers. He spent some time reeling in disgust as he snaked a drain.

He wasn’t dispassionate. He was quite the opposite, in fact, but his manner of expression didn’t always show it. One of his passions was music.

Most of the music he loved was a good deal older than himself. He felt that, if only everyone knew, if they were informed, they would feel as he did. He wanted to educate others.

“Hey, Ruby Tuesday.” Hyde sometimes growled, amiably enough to Ruby.

“Why does he call her that?” Jefferson asked Victor, and Victor’s shadow-colored eyes of blue-grey had widened in disbelief.

How could Jefferson not know The Rolling Stones? How could he not know Ruby Tuesday? It seemed impossible, as if he’d skipped his ABC’s and the required reading of Dick and Jane, to say nothing of Spot. Later, when Jefferson revealed that he was listening to Taylor Swift, Victor blanched. Face pained, he shook a trembling forefinger at a mystified Jefferson. He’d said, “No. No-no.”

The song-notes that came crashing out of the girls’ room were from Pattie La Belle’s Lady Marmalade.

Though shy of the girls, Victor couldn’t help it. He gravitated to the door. He was pulled, as the Millennium Falcon was pulled into the Death Star. His heart pumped and his red blood cells, secretly hearty within his anemic-looking body, moved to _hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister_!

With his fingertips, he pushed the door open. His eyes took a moment to adjust. To comprehend. The hallway in which he stood was all shadow and gloom; dark, wood floor, wallpaper of a very faint and narrow stripe, perhaps once burgundy. Dark, wooden doorways and scuffed, ivory-colored baseboards. Cracked crown molding.

It could be – it _should_ be beautiful. It was not.

In contrast, the girls’ room was very bright. Their window was wide open. They’d hung gauzy scarves as curtains, a gypsy assortment of reds, purples, pinks – a vivid orange. The sheer rags blew into the room, colorful ghosts, ushering-in chilly, sea-scented air.

Lamps were lit and some were covered in the same sort of scarf. It made the room bright, but with a stained-glass sort of glow. The clutter looked dreamy. If Victor had been more educated about bordellos, he might have identified one. As matters stood, his impression was of an ice cream parlor, a toddler’s overturned toybox, a newly painted carousel.

There was an unmistakable element of fun; that element identified by Mary Poppins.

Ruby was nowhere to be seen, but Lacey was present, dressed-up in some odd way. Her hair was piled on her head and her eyes were heavily embellished with sparkly make-up. Over patterned leggings and a black t-shirt, she’d tied one of the scarves at her waist, like a skirt. She was bedecked in plastic, childlike jewelry.

The surprise, as Victor’s eyes settled into true sight, was Jefferson. There he was, lounged on Lacey’s unmade bed. (The girls were surprisingly untidy). Simon also lounged, tucked-up beside him. He was barefoot, and his finger and toenails had been painted. His toenails were electric blue, his fingernails a variety of colors, like Skittles. There were colorful plastic barrettes all through his messy, top-heavy hair. He was smiling, relaxed… he looked happy.

He wore Lacey’s sunglasses; dark lenses and frames that were red hearts. He might have been wearing rose-tinted lip gloss.

The music was too loud for speech, so Victor simply ambled-in and sat on the bed, beside Jefferson. Both Jefferson and Lacey grinned in greeting. Lacey was dancing an arms-up, booty-shake dance; she continued to do so. Jefferson poked a painted toe into Victor’s rib and shouted, “ _Gitchi gitchi ya ya da da!_ ”

Lacey grinned, twirling. Her booty shake became exaggerated, and she hollered back, “ _Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir_?”

Jefferson put his hand to his open mouth, scandalized. Victor had no idea why.

The source of the music was a small turn-table, which caused instant romance and intrigue within Victor. This might be the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. Its case was little, red and made of hard plastic. It looked like it could close-up and be carried about, like luggage. A stack of long playing records was on the floor beside the turn-table, and Victor shifted to the floor to go through them. He was reverent, as though he’d stumbled onto evidence of his personal religion that went back to antiquity.

Some records were better than others.

There was Abba, The Mamas and the Papas. Bruce Springsteen’s Jungleland, Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty. They were alright.

His body froze, then heated up. David Bowie. The black and white, robot-mime pose that was Heroes, stark and darkly poetic. A figure that, at that time, was seen to be as dispassionate, as cold as Victor was often seen. It was just as untrue.

Just behind Bowie was Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues. Victor would swoon. He would hyperventilate. Dangerous things were going on in his vascular system. When Lacey lifted the needle from the record, an unfamiliar, echoey and static-filled scratch, Victor breathed, “ _Where_ did you get all this?”

She looked at him in an odd way, as if he’d prayed aloud, blessing his bologna sandwich at the dinner table while everyone else dove in.

“Me and Jefferson found it.” she said. “The records and the player. They were in one of the unused rooms, covered up in a sheet.”

Jefferson was giving Victor a curious head-tilt, heart-shaped eyes probing. His glossy lips curled into a smile… he’d been Lacey’s dress-up doll. He hugged Simon.

“There’s a T.V. up there.” He told Victor. “An old one, heavy as hell, with a tube. Way too big for us to get downstairs. And a tape player, and a bunch of tapes. We found all sorts of stuff.”

“The kids who were here, before, had better things.” Lacey added.

Nodding absently, Victor continued to browse through albums. Blue Oyster Cult. The reading aloud of Thumbelina, accompanied by an illustrated book? The B52s. An orchestral presentation of Peter and the Wolf, some Russian orchestra… that was funny. He needed to play it for Peter and Hyde.

Pulling out the B52s, he handed the LP to Lacey. “Play the third track.” He said.

She complied, a little shaky on the needle drop. He made a scolding face at her, then beamed at Jefferson, mysterious behind his Lolita shades. His mouth was disturbingly alluring, and Victor saw that he wore a candy bracelet. He was unsettled by a spontaneous, quick-flash of vision wherein he saw himself holding Jefferson’s forearm as he bent to bite a candy from his wrist.

They were all fairly still as the song began, a stalking of synthesizer, the guitar beginning a strange prowl. Kate Pierson probed the memory of her man, feeding a dark, pondering sort of feeling. Then she all but screamed, _Why don’t you dance with me? I’m not no Limburger_!

All three looked at each other, smiling as they began to belong to Victor’s cult of music. Through music, he sermonized.

 

 

 

Emma confessed to Killian her failure to be a girl. She felt jittery with nerves, her insides shaky. She’d never tried to explain, to express any of this, not even to David.

All told, Killian took it okay. Well, he didn’t really get it. “You’re not a girl.” He repeated her words. His brow drew down while his fingers massaged his hook, as if it ached. Perhaps it did. It looked like he tried to do math in his head. “I’m not sure what you’re saying to me, lass.”

Ugh. Again, with the _lass_.

“I don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t call me ‘lass’.”

“Well, I can’t call you ‘lad’, Emma. You’re beautiful.”

She blushed, looking down so as to shield herself with her hair. It was her hair that most often caught the attention of others… long, shining blonde hair and a slim figure. But mostly, once they’d taken in the serious nature of her face, her awkwardness within her body and her economy of expression, others grew to find her ordinary. She was just Emma.

And anyway, boys could be beautiful.

She saw Killian’s eyes take a furtive glance at her crotch, hidden away in her jeans. The underwear she wore, these days, were called ‘boy cut’. The cut was like sassy booty-shorts; only the most adventurous boys would be caught dead in them. A K-Mart special, $6.99 for a 4-pack.

“It’s not about my junk, Killian.” She murmured, having no desire to discuss her junk.

 Killian’s face was baffled; it was clear the wording was new. Junk? Shaking his head, shaking off the word, ‘junk’, he said, “You just… don’t feel like a girl?”

Emma nodded. It was way more complex than that. She’d initiated the conversation, in part, so she could try and figure it all out, herself.

_Her_ self.

Geez. In fact, she did think of herself as a she. She was actually very comfortable with her hair, something of a security blanket.

… But, to wear a skirt, a dress. It made her feel sheer panic, a discomfort that went way beyond anything as surface as fashion. She’d been made to do these things in the past, and the feeling of it was not only alien, but violation. Physically, it felt vulnerable. Open, in an awful way. It felt humiliating, even though no one was trying to humiliate her.

In those times of being forced into a dress, she so badly wanted the close press of her jeans to her body, she’d been in danger of tears. It felt like an invasion of spirit. The world felt less safe than ever.

In a dress, it was like she forgot basic things, like how to walk and talk. ‘Dressing up’ made her feel publicly naked. People stared. She couldn’t breathe and felt that something inside her, terrible and ugly, was exposed.

Then, there was being around other girls. She was nothing like them. She was a completely different species from Lacey and Ruby… Ruby, who was so shy despite being a beauty, and who longed for love so differently from Emma.

Yet, they _all_ longed.

Even Mary Margaret, less frivolous and seemingly boyish – with her short hair and practical manner – Mary Margaret was already a small woman. She navigated the world and made her plans according to a womanly compass. Emma couldn’t even imagine it.

The word _woman_ made Emma feel a little nauseous.

She sighed, as confused as ever. _Girl_ was alright, sort of… and maybe Killian was right; maybe she wouldn’t recognize herself as a l _ad_. Yet, a rejection of self persisted, and that rejection had completely ruined any hopes she’d nurtured for David. It was messing her up, mucking up her thoughts and choices, keeping her closed into herself.

The way she felt was; she was just outside of it, just outside of her body. When she thought of sex, she was just outside of it, observing. Her girl’s body might feel pleasure in fantasy, but whoever _she_ was, her true self was not in that body. Whoever her true self was, that person stood apart from breasts and girl-parts and a monthly cycle… all things she couldn’t accept. And yet… those things just kept on keeping on.

And, the sex fantasies were about boys; boys, together. Boys, kissing. The bodies of boys, a more clean and simple concept to Emma, more easily understood than herself, moving against one another. She couldn’t throw a female figure into the mix without getting squeamish, overly aware and turned off, the more so if the figure was herself.

She heaved another sigh. Her talk wasn’t really going well. It was just silence and confusion. She probably wouldn’t be able to explain any of it to Killian. She couldn’t explain it to herself. She would be alone, forever.

“Maybe you’re just a tom-boy.” Killian suggested.

_Maybe_. Whatever that meant. The phrase had suited her in her younger years. It worked for her psyche, without giving it much thought. It was puberty, adolescence… it was doing something as stupid as falling in love with David that had made it all so complicated.

Wanting to be touched, wanting sex, yet rejecting her own body’s role in the whole process. Unable to allow.

She would _never_ be a mother. It was an internal certainty, and she grieved to see David hover near Mary Margaret, his seed safely joined to her egg. No matter what happened to the two of them, they were connected from now on. They had a shared experience and a goal that was so beyond Emma, she felt like a toddler.

Killian gave a friendly tug to the sleeve of her shirt; an aqua-blue and deep green plaid, flannel thin and worn; it was her favorite. It was falling apart, like everything else.

“I respect your feelings.” He said, his manner surprisingly straightforward. “But I don’t know if I would ever be able to think of you as anyone other than Emma.”

Shrugging, uncertain about this, herself, Emma said, “Maybe it’s Emilio.”

Killian’s frown was instantaneous. He shook his head, _no_ , and the thoughtless negation made Emma bristle.

“No. No, absolutely not, love. You’d never pull it off.”

Why? Why did such statements needle her? A knee-jerk reaction, she wanted to cut off her hair. Get in a fight.

“Because I can’t pull off being a guy?” she huffed, feeling her face heat up.

Killian shook his head again. “Because you can’t pull off anything even remotely Hispanic.”

Oh.

Emma hid behind her hair, again, collecting herself. She bit back a smile.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Killian Jones was living in Dreamtime. Here and there, moments were very clear. There were things that shone, that seemed more solid than the general surroundings.

Emma, the green of her eyes and her sharp chin; she stood out. Her lines were hard and clean. More, it was something in her nature, frank and yet secretive, serious, that gave her definite lines. She became crystalline in a world of shadow and softness.

Rumplestiltskin.

Killian believed Rumplestiltskin to be the reason for the dream world, yet he was as clear as a bell to Killian. A beacon.

Perhaps he’d, at some fuzzy and misguided stage, made a deal with the Devil. Or, _a_ devil.

Clearly, he saw Rumplestiltskin walk along the cliff’s edge. Grass on the hills was shorn, bristling tufts of fading green and transparent yellow. Along the cliff’s edge it grew long and worried about, wickedly. There was always wind blowing in from the sea.

Rumplestiltskin wore a three-piece suit and walked with a cane as glossy-black as onyx, but – out on the hills and cliffs – he looked wild. Salt spray rose up to meet him and his too-long hair blew back. Silver-white sideburns shone, startling beneath the warm chestnut of long bangs, falling like wings. Closer, there were threads of silver that made a subtle sparkle in his hair.

He was a scarecrow on the loose, but crows were ever drawn to him; no telling what hungers a scarecrow might nurture.

Killian roamed the halls and rooms of the shelter, and it was all a blur of shadow and light, muted colors, voices of children that carried an adolescent cadence; a much sneakier cadence that was the secret voices of babies, wriggling into his head. Warmth at his hip where he carried one of them, a baby. But, it was no baby. The thing whispered in his head with a voice like dried leaves, scratching on gravel. Sometimes it was the voice of the sea, an ongoing murmur. The voice directed Killian’s steps, yet the speech was not his language.

It was said Rumplestiltskin trafficked in babies. Well, it was true, and even stranger than one might suspect. He brokered them, making deals with an all but extinguished race. Human babies to pump up a withering, in-bred bloodline. Sullying up the genetic pool, for its own good. He was well paid in magic. He looked after the little, wizened versions of infants from the Others, until such a time as they could go out into the world… blend with its population and spread influence. Integrating, learning, perhaps breeding mixed-race offspring. Maybe, one day, taking them home.

Fulfilling whatever hungers they might have. Milk, for one.

But for some, this would never happen. Some simply were the payment, the magic, itself. Through their presence, they kept Rumplestiltskin juiced up; his little bundles of smack, in a sense. It was these creatures who most often got in Killian’s head and set up shop.

To Killian, it had seemed harmless enough. Granted, his moral compass was a bit off. Why not allow the buggers a place in the human world? Why not allow milk and cookies, as one left out for Santa Claus? (In payment? In sacrifice? Was it part of an ages-old contract?)

Initially, he had not paused to consider the other side of the coin; sending human babies off to the Others. Rumplestiltskin wasn’t stealing babies, after all. They were left at the shelter’s gate, in danger of being dragged off by coyotes or even raccoons. They were babies who were born in secret, left under bushes and in dumpsters… if, in fact, the mother didn’t find it within herself to wrap a slippery cord about a fragile neck and end things, there and then. The children of children, which now made Killian feel very jumpy about Mary Margaret’s little fish, swimming in her belly. Babies with no one, no prospects. Maybe things would be better with the Others.

But, there were a handful, now, that were returned. Rejected by human parents and by the strange ones who’d fostered them. They were the quiet babies, big-eyed and spooky.

They liked Mary Margaret, as well as animals and soft music. They liked him well enough, though they were fuzzy and incomplete in his perception. Killian worried, pestered in dreams and in Dreamtime over the returned babies. Who would they become? Would they grow up? What had happened to them?

Another point of clarity, sharp and painful in his head; the returned babies did not like Peter. They recoiled from him. They covered their faced with small hands and – breaking their all-consuming silence – they screamed, red-faced and distressed.

It bothered Peter not at all. He ignored the commotion.

As Mary Margaret progressed in her pregnancy, stubbornly immune to arguments of termination or adoption, Peter eyed the growing swell of her breasts.

The desire, Killian knew, was for _milk_. He knew Peter’s kind.

 

 

 

Within the Dreamtime, Killian needed Rumplestiltskin. He was pulled. He needed to be close, and when a distance stretched between them he was anxious. It was horrible. His heartbeat became erratic and the dream-soup feeling became thick. He lost the instinctive sense of how his limbs worked and walked stiffly, using force of will.

He felt better when he was with Rumplestiltskin. When they were alone, when masks were dropped and sex was in the offering, he felt very clear, indeed.

It was a relief, that clarity. Ah, solid ground, reality. To lay in Rumplestiltskin’s bed and look at him, naked of his suits and postures and glamours. He could not stop looking, lacking conviction that this solid reality would remain fixed in his memory.

Soon enough, he would wonder; Who are you? Truly, who are you?


	7. Chapter 7

There were occasional outings to downtown Epiphany. Much more seldom, jaunts by car into the city, or to the surrounding municipalities of Lost Son and Rabbit Town. The kids were always hungry for the other towns with the ticklish names; Epiphany had long since revealed that it was misnamed.

But, no. Most often it was a walking jaunt Rumplestiltskin undertook. Down the long, winding road that led from the cliffs, past pastures with cows or sheep and usually one or two little burros, solid and tufted in appearance. Past fields of alfalfa, emerald green, or a spread of yellow rapeseed over rolling hills that was so yellow, it hurt to look at it directly. Their eyes were accustomed to the muted heathers and muffled sorrows of the cliffs.

Killian brought up the rear, his hook a shepherd’s hook, on the lookout for strays. Nearly everyone pushed a pram or carried a baby, strapped to the chest in a papoose sort of sling.

The babies, innocent or wise, stared. They stared at the land and at the cynical faces of the burros. They raised questioning, nearly hairless brows to the weird eyes of goats. In one pasture, deer grazed. They pretended to be cows, and the babies heard them mutter _moo_ , under their breath, inconspicuous. The babies’ mouths made small O’s, heads swiveling to the bigger people. Did they recognize the impostors?

But the babies said nothing, not even a gurgle. The wizened ones, those creepy raisons, became homesick for the small, white and unbelievably delicate deer of their homeland. Those deer wore circlets of tiny silver bells around their necks. They walked in quiet rows, and the bells made a haunting chime that jingled throughout deep forests. Overhead, the white flowers of silver-bell trees rained down, frilled cups smaller than thimbles.

It was a ghostworld, their homeland. That world could mean hunger, uncertainty, yet they missed it. In their very bones, (perhaps once branches), they missed it. They grew weary of the world in which they’d landed, though it was imprinted and understood that it would enrich their blood, make stronger their small and wasted bodies. Ultimately, strengthen their people.

Their fading people in the ghostworld.

The other babies were in their rightful place, their true home. They were glad for it. They’d been to the ghostworld, and they were forever changed for it.

Would they ever find voices, even only to coo or say ba-ba-ba? To sing along with Killian’s ooh-la-ooh-rah-rah? They didn’t know and _could not say_. They looked to small Peter in distrust.

Oddly, so did the wizened babies. The not-babies.

By the time the group reached town, hair and clothing damp and a-sparkle with mist, the babies had seen enough. It tuckered them out; the seeing, the wondering, the missing. Questions: Who? What? Why?

…. When?

There were things to express that they were incapable of expressing. Frustrated, they elected to sleep. It was better to dream.

In town, strangers marveled and remarked, “Such _good_ babies!” Quiet babies were good babies.

Rumplestiltskin smiled and made people squirmily uncomfortable. He wore a sprig of fresh rosemary at his lapel, medicinal and peculiar.

“Aye.” He agreed. “They’re _good_ babies.”

 

 

 

 

Lacey loved coming to town, and yet it could be difficult. There things to see, things she couldn’t have, and it was inevitable she would fall prey to envy. Envy grew large within her on a fairly regular basis, and, with the added stimulation of town, it could be a painfully hungry thing.

In addition to seeing, she was aware she would be seen. At the shelter, playing dress-up before the outing, the idea pleased her. It excited her. In such moments, she always had the feeling that, in some true way, she would be recognized. Fantasies about the recognition varied; sometimes an amorphous set of parents emerged, tearful and overjoyed to find their long, lost child, at last. Other times a movie or music industry scout was overwhelmed by her magnetism and charisma, her innate beauty and intriguing personal style. Sometimes it was a beautiful man who arrived, evidence all about his person of a healthy financial profile. In a scene that would make Emma gag, he rescued her. It was never entirely clear if he was a romantic vision of a father, the sort featured in A Little Princess, or if he was to be her lover, her husband.

Once the journey was underway, however, she began to have doubts. She remembered how different people in town looked from those living on the cliffs… those dangling precariously over the dark ocean, surrounded always by scents of ancient murk and earthly babies. Plus, the scent of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup; coffee, too long on a burner. These things seemed ever-present.

She remembered the way those in town seemed somehow buffed. Polished and varnished. They had a clean and fresh aura that she could not achieve with mere bathwater; maybe it had to be financed.

As pleased as she was about the turn-table discovery she’d made with Jefferson, (that odd little Victor was over the _moon_ ), she knew she’d see people drawn into the small, rectangular, seemingly magical world of their phones.

Envy pricked with a snarly, little nail. There was a faerie at work; Rumplestiltskin said so, and Lacey half-believed him. A dark little hob that used its claws to scrape soot from the insides of chimneys and to poke at her sternum, her soft belly, where she was in a fit of discontent. The impet took hold of her breath in its darkened teeth and gnawed upon it.

The phones, like the people, were sleek. From within their tiny world, they made music, movies… they carried books and connected to a larger world. They connected to other people. They took pictures; people documented life and gazed upon themselves as Lacey gazed in her warped mirror, inventing and reinventing.

She imagined herself closing up the turn-table and its electrical cord into its suitcase shape and hauling it into town. Jefferson alongside, struggling under a stack of records. Of course, he had his stupid rabbit.

He, dowdy in his second-hand, too-big jeans and a faded, red t-shirt that showed a yellow outline of Florida. It read, ‘Florida: The Wang of America.” Which could barely be read, so it did kind of appear that a random wang blazed upon his shirt.

And she, in her gypsy costume. Lace, she’d decided, was her trademark. Someone had thought to name her for it, after all. She desired a trademark. She also desired a signature scent, but so far it eluded her. Upon the journey, her scent was dust, sleepy baby and strawberries-and-cream lip gloss.

She wore lace in her hair, tied up in a messy bun. She wore her fingerless, lace gloves. She’d tied a broad cut of lace around her waist, making a rakish, belly-dance sort of skirt over her leggings.

At the shelter, she’d been pleased with her efforts. Retro, she thought. She felt as though she had a congenital, instinctive connection to cool.

Now, in envy and dismay, she decided her fashion choices were not well thought out. Jefferson loved her outfit; this should have been a clue. All she could see was _cheap_. Not to mention goofy. She was a display of gaudy plastic and prizes won from gumball machines.

Coming from thrift as it did, all of her lace was little old lady lace. It was scraps and rags. Her gloves were ancient nylon and the ‘skirt’ was likely a table runner. All told, it was worse than Jefferson’s lack of finesse and dedication to Simon. Well, maybe not as bad as Simon. His frayed canvas sneakers, the rubber soles worn completely flat.

And, on her part, it was deliberate.

And then, there they were. People. Kids, her own age. So different… girls who wore leggings, as she did, but wore them with tall, leather boots and fitted, smart jackets, as if they all belonged to a country club with a grand stable. Or they wore hoodies with interesting designs and kept ear-buds in their ears. Everyone looked like anime.

They wore North Face coats and carried Yeti containers. Their purses were worth more than Lacey’s life.

They interacted with others, yet remained enclosed in their own, little worlds, removing only one ear-bud during conversation. Their eyes strayed constantly to their phones, reinforcing both boundaries and self-importance. Their fingers were ever in touch with the small devices, moving in spell-like ways, exuding a cyborg-like competence.

“I hate you.” Lacey whispered, uncertain as to why she would say it. She wanted to _be_ all of them, to live their careless lives and have their plentiful things. But, the feeling of anger was strong. She wanted to steal all the things they took for granted and set them adrift in the wild world. Once adrift, she wanted to set Hyde on their doomed paths.

At her whisper, the baby she carried opened its eyes and looked at her in question.

“Not you.” She told it.

It gave her surprising comfort, the presence of the baby. She lifted her chin. She hoisted her baby-bundle a little higher on her chest and rearranged. With even less understanding than she had of her burst of hatred, she thought, _I’m better than all of you_.

An instinct grabbed hold. She’d been walking somewhat between Ruby and Jefferson, and the instinct pulled her away from both. Her step quickened and she was briefly aware of her grubby sneakers, as worn-to-death as Jefferson’s. No sleek boots, no pixie-like, ballet flats…

So the hell what. Her pace took her to the front of the line, just behind Rumplestiltskin. She walked, instinct satisfied, beside Hyde.

An unlikely prospect for anything fatherly, he was nevertheless in charge of a baby, as were they all. His hand was huge, a splay-fingered support beneath the rounding of its papoosed body. He made no acknowledgement of Lacey’s presence, but they fell into step, together. Lacey felt the gang-like feeling of it and it bolstered her.

Let the cared-for, adequately moneyed children deal with Hyde. Even with Peter. It might be funny.

Ahead of her, Rumplestiltskin had a sudden alertness about the nape of his neck, about his shoulders. She could have sworn that, cat-like, his ears turned back.

With a lift of his cane, he said, “Alright, you lot. Disperse. Be dandelion seeds. Meet back here, at the town clock, at 2:27p.m.”

Disperse they did. Each had a small sum of pocket money. They headed for the pharmacy, with its deli and soda fountain, or the overpriced coffee shop; for the hardware store, which was also a nickel-and-dime store. There wasn’t a great deal to chose from. Coming from the Shelter, no one bothered with the many antique stores… they were old hat, too much like home.

Babies opened their eyes for a moment and wondered, _wi-fi? Wy-fy? Wee-fee_? Whatever could it mean? They drifted back to sleep.

Lacey stuck with Hyde and Peter. Ruby, utterly disgusted by Hyde, moved closer to Emma. Killian stood sentry at a central fountain, its basin sparkling with coins that they all wanted to scoop up. To Lacey, he looked like a meerkat.

“Wishes, my muscular butt.” Hyde muttered, looking at the heaps of submerged coins, incredulous.

People threw money away. They made a wish to some unnamed spirit and gave it their money.

It was now well established that David was always at Mary Margaret’s side; all were cognizant of her expanding oven, the bun within. A bubble of delicacy seemed to surround her belly.

At a distance behind Rumplestiltskin’s path, Victor headed across a cobblestone courtyard, his destination the library. Jefferson loped alongside, holding Simon by a paw. For no reason, Jefferson repeatedly lilted, “Rumple-bumple-scrumple-grumple.” Simon bounced against his leg.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Ruby and Emma, along with Mary Margaret and David went to the pharmacy with future plans for the hardware store, its dime-store allure. Not that anything sold for $.10. In fact, it was rather pricey, certainly nowhere in the neighborhood of a Dollar Store or Wal-Mart, (for which one had to be on the highway leading out of town. None of the children thought of the highway as leading _into_ town.)

Lacey, peeved with her ensemble of junk, decided against joining them. She had all the cheap, plastic crap she needed. They would get ice-cream sodas at the fountain; Mary Margaret had already announced that her baby liked fries and ice-cream, but was not fond of canned peas. Her face had turned a little green, backing up her statement.

Following the tug she’d felt approaching town, Lacey sat at an outside table with Hyde and Peter. The table and chair set-up was of wrought iron, painted white. A few were scattered on the cobblestones outside a coffee shop called The Goblin Market.

Surely something better than the usual Made in Thailand fare was to be found within. Passers-by looked at them, curious about the babies.

Testing her instinct, Lacey said, “Hey, Hyde.” She never thought to address Peter, who nevertheless stared at her with alarming, green-eyed intensity. His shoulders were in a hunched, forward lean, angled toward her. “Why don’t you go get me a fancy coffee and a giant, blueberry muffin?”

Leaned back and casual, a lazy, sprawled wolf, Hyde seemed to be in no hurry to do her bidding. Princess Bride it was not. He lit a cigarette. The baby strapped to his chest rolled its eyes in ire.

In his growl, (Lacey always managed to forget its depth until he actually spoke), he said, “Something wrong with your legs, Lace? They seemed fine when you busted my nuts.”

She stared at him, dead-eyed. How gallant. Well, what had she expected? He slouched with his legs wide apart and seemed to, more or less, aim his crotch at passing women. They hurried along, as they should. The babies puzzled them, but Hyde’s menace was clear. Watching their nervous hustle, he laughed a breathy little laugh, blowing out puffs of smoke.

Surprising her, Peter said, “What kind of coffee do you want, Lacey? It’s on me.”

It surprised Hyde, too. He gave a look of sardonic question, his gaze aimed at elfin Peter. Who was, all the same, a small wolf.

“Whatcha gonna get _me_ , sweetpea?” he asked.

“My dick, if you ask nicely.” Peter said.

Peter’s baby exchanged a look with Hyde’s baby. _This, again._ Lacey’s baby slept, content.

Lacey felt rather strange. Peter’s answer seemed like the sort of things boys said to one another with ease, just to be ornery. It wasn’t really new, yet she felt mildly thrilled. She also felt a belated sense of caution slipping in.

She was both on the outside and the inside. Peter accepted her into the fold, yet she still felt like Jane Goodall, observing chimps and pretending to be one of them.

The smaller primate had to be verbally strong and wily to remain on somewhat even ground with the larger primate. Maybe he could out-think the bigger brute.

“Besides,” Peter added, “I know you don’t like to be beholden.”

Hyde made a kissy-face at Peter, fluttering his eyelashes. How weird, the aggressive manner in which boys flirted with one another, all in the name of insult. An endless game of ‘who’s on top’.

“Will I be beholden to you, Peter?” Lacey asked.

“Nah.” To which Hyde made the startling sound of a whip cracking. Lacey wasn’t sure why. Hyde blew Peter a kiss, and Peter caught it from the air, then used the same hand to rub the kiss against his crotch.

Lacey felt the thrill again, touched with a niggling of fear. Interesting, she thought. “Then, I’ll have the macchiato. Extra whipped cream.”

“And a _giant_ blueberry muffin.” Hyde reminded Peter.

“Warmed.” Lacey added.

“Jesus, woman. Anything else?” Hyde growled. His voice was like machinery, gears grinding. Lacey felt peculiar to be addressed as ‘woman’.

To Peter, she said, “No, that’s it. I’ll share my muffin, if you want.”

She’d said it in innocence, and even while Peter and Hyde exchanged a wicked and sly glance, she was puzzled. Then she got it. As Peter entered The Goblin Market, Lacey blushed and looked away from Hyde.

“Wonder what you’re after.” He softly mused. He blew a plume of smoke away from his baby, a dark and quietly dangerous dragon.

 

 

 

 

It happened while Lacey drank her gussied-up coffee and, indeed, shared her muffin. Hyde made jokes about it being big enough to feed the starving nations. Lacey was blessed with an extravagance of muffin. Muffin for all.

She dipped her finger in whipped cream and sucked it… again, in innocence. She was quickly learning that many ordinary gestures and words could be made dirty by the boys. They pounced on every opportunity. Here and there, she made experimental attempts to beguile.

Hyde and Peter were so different from Jefferson. And Victor, for that matter. In truth, she liked Jefferson much more, but they excited her in ways that Jefferson didn’t. She felt a recurrence of the feeling that _something might happen_ … the long, lost family, the movie mogul… something. They put little spikes of heat into her blood, tickles of danger. The tug she’d felt, the instinct to be near Hyde persisted.

A group of sleek teenagers flocked by, most absorbed with phones or other devices, many enshrouded in a bubble made of earbuds. A few of the girls became aware of the focus of Hyde’s gaze; one that said both _fuck me_ and _fuck you_. He projected hatred at them, but also a raw promise of sex. No one had reached a maturity level to process the confusion of his message, certainly not Lacey. His gaze caused tension, and it seemed the girls telepathically reached a shared decision to ease the tension by openly giggling at Lacey.

Lacey felt flushed and didn’t know how to react. She wasn’t sure why they laughed. At her clothes, probably. Or maybe… just her. Maybe, in their well-funded perfection, they knew she wasn’t right. Those with families seemed to sometimes sniff out the wrongness of the orphan.

Then Hyde, startling the group with his evil-robot voice, said, “Problem, bitches?”

It shocked Lacey. Her heart performed a spastic and painful squeeze and she thought, _oh my gosh… Hyde is coming to my rescue_. In his ill-advised, obnoxious way, but still. And after she’d kicked him in the nuts.

As belated as her sense of caution, the thought crept in… _uh-oh_.

A boy in the group, hair roughed up with product and wearing the dark-colored, skinny jeans that boys with money were wearing, stepped in front of the targeted girl. Lacey marveled at the girl’s straight, smooth and shiny hair, like a waterfall of mink. Her fingernails were not chewed-down; they were shiny discs of a pewter-like color, mercurial and shifty. One of her rings was like a huge, jeweled flower. The boy blocked her from Hyde’s dark glare.

“No man, no problem.” He said to Hyde, and Hyde grinned at Peter. He observed, “Hey, look who answers to ‘bitch’.” He seemed pleasantly surprised.

Peter grinned as well, and Lacey felt her belly go tight. She’d made a mistake. Why was she hanging out with wolves and Mordreds, who were all balls and no brains? They were territorial, often needlessly. Hyde or Peter might get up and piss a boundary around the table. Suddenly they were including her as one of their own, and her insides waged a little war. In part, her spirit soared. Under Hyde’s protection, she would now roam the school halls under a mantle of fuck-with-me-not. But she also felt that no real good could come of running with this particular pack.

… And how sad they looked, next to the town kids. It wasn’t just her, in her silly costume. Peter, slouched in an army jacket that swallowed him, whole. Hyde, flannel shirt over a Henley of uncertain color, everything frayed and riddled with cigarette burns… there was a rip in his threadbare jeans at the upper thigh.

She should be with Ruby. With Emma, Mary Margaret and David. Sure, David had knocked Mary Margaret up, but he wasn’t a wolf. He had some sense. Better yet, she should be in the cool and shadow of the library with Jefferson and Victor. It would mean keeping an awareness of the lurking Rumplestiltskin, but whatever.

“What’d you say?” the boy asked. He wasn’t as big as Hyde, but he wasn’t small.

“Having trouble hearing?” Hyde didn’t bother to stand up. He blew smoke at the boy, eyeing his earbuds. The set of his shoulders, his torso spoke to Lacey. He looked down on the town kids while, in ways, she looked up to them. He was thinking that a wolf would never go about plugged into a phone, zoned-out with earbuds and unaware of its surroundings.

But Lacey longed for it. Block out the world and create a world of one’s own. Do whatever zippy thing these kids did with their eyes and fingers that made them seem so wholly competent. They were like pretty aliens.

Lacey saw Hyde’s baby, wakeful, stare up at the boy. The baby tried to stare some sense into him. The message was lost, and the baby sighed as the boy said, “You’re asking to get your ass kicked.” There was a touch of uncertainty in his voice, as if he wondered if that’s truly what Hyde asked for. There was also a hesitance in his eyes… How did one go about a fight that involved a baby strapped to the chest of the antagonist?

Hyde didn’t miss the uncertainty; such details were his specialty. He smiled. “But am I asking nicely?”

Then… Lacey didn’t know what happened. Everyone in the group of town kids fell over. _Plop_ … although, it wasn’t a soft landing. It was like the gravitational pull of the earth upon everyone’s butts became too much. They all went down, hard, feet swept from beneath them.

United in mutiny, phones fell out of pockets and escaped grasping hands. They went skittering over the uneven cobblestones. The word ‘bitch’ appeared on the pocket of the boy’s hoodie, as if embroidered.

Hyde continued to smile and smoke, unperturbed and casually polluting his infant charge. He appeared satisfied, unsurprised. Gasping, Lacey looked from Hyde to Peter. Peter gave her a very subtle wink. Just as subtle, his forefinger made a motion over the wrought iron table.

As one, the fallen phones went dashing away from their owners, who sent up a cry of alarm and dismay. The phones were an escaped herd, some dragging earbuds like loosed reins. Wild horses, domestic no more. The phones thrilled to the notion of forming a gang, roaming the Epiphany nights and sharing ill-gotten intel for profit.

Peter’s finger rose a bit, crooked to the air, and teenagers began to scramble and struggle to their feet. It was fairly comical, a choreographed dance of mayhem, but Lacey couldn’t laugh. She watched kids disperse in many directions, chasing phones-at-large. It amazed her that the phones were the priority… phones first, questions about magical or supernatural phenomena later. She was frozen, _knowing_ she’d made a mistake. She’d taken a wrong turn.

Yet, she was _exhilarated_.

Hyde called after the kids, “Uh-oh! Better run, bitches! Whatever will you tell Daddy Warbucks?”

Peter snorted, then took an enormous bite of his portion of blueberry muffin. A wolf-bite. His cheeks stuck out as much as his ears, a devilish chipmunk. His green eyes glowed and twinkled at Lacey, full of mischief.

She wondered, having witnessed the little show of magic – done for her sake; Was she beholden?

 

 

 

Everyone re-assembled at the town clock as instructed. It was a tower clock, attached to the courthouse. Like both library and basilica, the building was of dark and Gothic design… huge stone doorways were arched and recessed, busy with relief sculpture. Some of the sculpture, if one observed, was surprisingly devilish.

Aside from the commerce of the pharmacy and The Goblin Market, each featuring colorful awnings and broad, well-lit display windows, the square of downtown was rather dour. Gargoyles and angels, alike, topped the basilica and threw dark shadows onto those below.

As children sidled-up, all with an air of reluctance, Rumplestiltskin lifted his nose like a dog and sniffed. His nostrils flared.

Having so recently felt the economy of her wardrobe, Lacey stared at his with new eyes. A three-piece suit? All this time, she’d merely found him weird. He was a relic, with his cane and old-world speech. He dressed up the way older people still dressed up to go to church, complete with hats and gloves.

Now she thought, _you bastard_. Did he have _money_? Did he gloat over it in private rooms? Order tailor-made, custom fit items while the rest of them got excited when a donation box arrived from the Salvation Army?

He sniffed, then turned dark and hooded eyes on Peter. He pointed his cane at Peter’s waifish form. “What happened?” he asked.

Peter grinned. He shrugged.

Hyde said, “Some town kids were harassing Lacey.”

Surprised eyes turned to Lacey; Ruby and company. Lacey blushed, newly discovered under the watchful eyes of Hyde.

Peter added, “My fingers got twitchy.”

With a sigh, Rumplestiltskin turned to Killian. “Where were you, dearie?”

Killian had a mouth full of Snickers, puffing out one cheek. He held the partially wrapped candy bar up to Rumplestiltskin and jerked his head toward the pharmacy.

“Delightful.” Rumplestiltskin observed, dry. “I’m so glad you found your bit of happiness in this bleak world, Killian. It warms my heart.” Killian scratched the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. Turning back to Peter, Rumplestiltskin leaned forward, balanced on his cane. “When in town, we don’t cast.” He said. “Understood?”

Peter nodded, but still grinned. His twitchy fingers were shoved deep into his jacket pockets. He bounced on his toes.

With another sigh, Rumplestiltskin smirked. “That said – “

He clenched one leather gloved hand into a fist and jerked it. Immediately, it appeared someone invisible had yanked Peter’s jacket by the back of the collar. He stumbled; it was as though he was being hurtled along by the scruff of the neck, perhaps by a giant. He scowled, his body not under his control. He was an awkward puppet.

Smiling, Rumplestiltskin said, “Lead the way, boy.”

With jerky, spasmotic movements, Peter turned and fitfully trip-walked toward home. He leaned forward in an odd way, jacket collar high behind his head. His blush was mottled and intense.

Bumbling, the rest of the group followed his zombie-droid lead and headed back to the cliffs. Hyde glowered darkly at Rumplestiltskin, but knew better than to oppose. Under his breath, Jefferson whispered his marching cadence: Rumple- _bumple_ , Rumple- _bumple_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Ruby asked, “What the heck were you doing with those two idiots?”

Her question was echoed in the faces of Victor and Jefferson, all gathered in the girl’s room. Victor manned the turntable. His manner suggested he’d missed it while they were away. The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter, played at a medium volume.

Lacey shrugged. She had no answers. She’d been led, and knew not what led her. Even now, she felt a dangerous desire to go to the room Hyde and Peter shared. She was restless… The energy of Hyde and Peter differed greatly from her current company. She was antsy for the foreign feeling of wolves. She’d never been in their room… it was bound to be rank with boy-smells and sharp scented violence.

“Ugh.” Ruby shuddered. “You shouldn’t get mixed up with them.”

“I know.” Lacey admitted. She did know.

Jefferson cuddled Simon on Lacey’s bed, as was his wont. “Peter looks like an elf.” He said.

That made Lacey smile. She’d found his elfishness, his mischievous eyes to be rather charming while in town. Jefferson continued, “Not like a Legolas elf, though. He’s like the elf who wanted to be a dentist… in that Rudolf Christmas special.”

With a chuckle of recognition, Victor said, “The one who pulls a bad tooth from the Abominable Snowman, then he’s no longer abominable.”

Now grinning, Jefferson said, “That must be Hyde. Poor old Hyde. We all thought he was a monster, but he just had a bad tooth.”

The boys snorted, pleased with themselves. Lacey and Ruby exchanged a look. _All boys are idiots_. Probably even David, busy protecting the flock and fathering children, was actually an idiot.

Victor laid down next to Jefferson and opened one of the books he’d checked out of the library, an Atlas of Human Anatomy. Another look was exchanged. _Oblivious idiots_ , wrapped up in their own interests and sense of self, hopelessly attached to rabbits, to the past and to each other. A dense-minded loyalty that seemed to exclude girls. That was boys.

 While Victor read, Jefferson moved closer to look at gnarly pictures. A flayed-open arm, ropes and threads of things fanned out for study. Generous, he propped Simon against Victor’s chest. He was learning about music under Victor's tutelage... with the song, he murmured, “Love, sister… is just a kiss away.”

 

 

 

 

“Rumplestiltskin.” Killian said.

Rumplestiltskin, nose in a book, murmured, “Yes, my snickerdoodle?”

“I think it did something to the babies, today, when Peter cast. They seem different.”

The book was set aside. “Indeed, dearie?”

“Aye. They’re very… awake. Quiet, like always. But there’s a room full of wide-awake babies in cribs. I think they’re thinking about it.”

 Killian suppressed a little shudder. He’d laid them down for the night and they’d followed him with their eyes. When he’d given them their bottles, they’d given solemn suck. They’d stared up at him, eyes locked to his, fixedly.

Rumplestiltskin smiled, not entirely unpleasantly. “I imagine it did catch their attention. Not to fret, Killian, they’ll be alright. They’re used to magic.”

“ _Your_ magic.” Killian said, feeling rather insistent. They’d spooked him. “They’re not at ease around Peter.”

“I know, dearie.”

Rumplestiltskin picked up his book again. Killian couldn’t even read its title… it was in a language that looked like a series of suns and moons to him. Symbols of planets and stars, dragon nodes and markers of etheric planes. He stared at the leather and gold leaf and felt restless. His body shifted within its shell of clothing, his skin hot.

“Rumplestiltskin.”

“Yes, my… spicy cashew?”

“Are you going to read all night?”

Rumplestiltskin set the book aside again, his eyes moving over Killian in a musing way. Seeing a small hitch in Killian’s breath, his eyes darkened.

“What’s on your mind, dearie?”

Killian began undoing buttons on his shirt, one-handed and slow, his eyes on Rumplestltskin. Rumplestiltskin leaned back in his chair, watching.


	10. Chapter 10

Hyde looked at Mary Margaret in disgust, barely raising his eyes to project his scorn. He was met with a narrowing of David’s sky-blue eyes, a weird pursing of his too-pretty mouth. He looked down; the couple moved on.

The couple. It made him feel sick to his stomach. Now that Mary Margaret was the mother he’d always known her to be, his image of her purity, there for him to make impure, was totally blown. The stupidity of this had been pointed out to him.

It was stupid, but it was the truth. When she was virginal, Our Most Beloved – as the weird, little rabbit-boy called her – Hyde’s image of her maternal quality was clear. He’d wanted to fuck her so badly, then. He’d reached thoughts that went beyond sex… he’d wanted to be the one to get her pregnant. He thought of some distant scenario in which he could provide, be a provider, and he stood with Mary Margaret in an invented kitchen, unattached to any Shelter or system. He hugged her from behind and considered what sort of life they’d make. Maybe his big hands moved over the swell of her belly, busy growing his baby.

It was like staking a claim, and now that someone had beaten him to it, much sooner than he would have imagined, the attraction was gone. It imploded, it turned in on itself and became foul.

“It’s like you wanted the Virgin Mary.” Peter observed, he who pointedly did not want to stand beneath the gaze of the basilica’s stone angels. Anything not resolutely pagan made him retch, physically. “You’re not even Catholic, are you?”

Hyde shrugged. Who knew? He’d never been inside the basilica or any church of any denomination. Nor any temple… not even a conference room hosting a self-help group. But he assumed that somewhere in his history, he had people. Some ongoing chain of DNA had managed to spit him out and into this shit life, after all. Maybe he had people who were Catholic.

Maybe they sacrificed goats to some guardian, favor-granting god. Or virgins, apparently quite the morsel.

Now that Mary Margaret’s tits were ballooning out, preparing to drop down milk, he no longer felt the need to slate his hunger to suck. It made no sense… the severance of attraction.

But, Peter. Jesus. He’d never declared such passions, odd hungers in the first place, but it was clear he hungered, now. He stared at Mary Margaret’s boobs, hoisted high by her growing belly. His stomach _growled_ , making Hyde unsure if the hunger was wholly sexual.

Hyde wasn’t Catholic, but in a very secret way he was religious. It snuck up on him in his very young years, and he had no idea where it came from. Except… hunger. There seemed to be a well-defined link to hunger, and to mothers.

It began with the Sunmaid Raisons girl.

Briefly, when he was little and reportedly cute, a small Mowgli, he’d been in a foster home with what seemed like twenty other kids. Every day, in the late afternoon, they were given little mini-boxes of Sunmaid Raisons.

The raisons were… okay. At that time, Hyde wasn’t well-acquainted with candy or sweets, and the sticky, sugary quality of the dried fruit made him almost high. Saliva spurted painfully at the back of his jaw, raison upon his tongue. Really, they were too sweet… too shriveled and too dried. He could only ever eat one or two.

It was the Sunmaid that got to him. Her portrait on a rich background of red approached the holy. A saintly image. She, in her dark hair and peasant garb, holding her basket of plenty which runneth over with grapes. Food in abundance. She smiled and happily shared, for he believed her basket was magic. Fertile, it never emptied.

He came to have a discarded cigar box, one he loved for the sweet-yet-dark smell of cherry blend. He kept an empty Sunmaid box within and began collecting other things. Things she might like, he reasoned. Dried flowers, interesting leaves or stones. Toy surprises from cereal boxes. A feather. Over time, it was clear that he’d created an altar, a little shrine in the cigar box. He’d made a goddess of the Sunmaid.

He began to think she’d been a goddess, all along. A marketing team simply borrowed her image. There came to be a handful of other goddesses, saints. The Lily Maid on the Lily Cornmeal package, with her Native American braids and harvest of corn, the husks a rich green. The rounded, woman-shaped container for Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup was almost too much to bear… he could touch it. He could caress eager, sugar-coated fingers over the molded shape of breasts and hips. She continued to beam and smile as he did so, untroubled by his zeal.

Women who nurtured, who were mothers and had plenty, who shared; when he was little, this was what he’d literally worshipped. In his bed at night, in a new place and distrusting of the erratic behavior of adults, he’d silently prayed to the Sunmaid. He sought her comfort and her protection.

He’d never considered virtue, as one might with the Virgin Mary, yet it was true that this quality was the one most damaged by the mere idea that Mary Margaret had given it up for David. David, that twat.

Hyde’s feelings were hurt. He would admit this to no one, but it was a fact. No one was more shocked by Mary Margaret’s transition to fallen woman, (ruined girl, he thought; capsized child), than he. He was bruised by it. With Peter’s help, he scrounged up pot and kept himself mildly stoned. His eyes stayed red, dark shadows pooled beneath.

He came to a place of lacking all focus. What was the point? He would never have the life he wanted. All flavor had gone out of his practice of terrorizing older women. (When Killian intervened, he privately expressed bafflement to Hyde. “I don’t get your approach, mate. Do you want to bed these women or beat the shit out of them?” The answer was _yes_.)

If only he could envision something like a future. If only women could be trusted, with hearts and with children. If only he had some money or the proper ambition… or the vision to get those things.

Then, out of nowhere, Lacey had sidled up to him. She was not a mother in the least. But… she had vision.


	11. Chapter 11

Killian was warm, happy and content. He was not one hundred percent clear, but neither was he wallowing in dreamtime. The lack of clarity was only sleepy fuzziness, a semi-drugged state visited upon him after sex.

He was fucked-out. For a while, Rumplestiltskin’s room had been as wildly unclear as the soupy, dreamy feeling. It happened when Killian gave himself, when he got what he wanted and Rumplestiltskin took over. His head got noisy. There was a howling wind in there, felt also in his chest, an expansive feeling. His own breath and Rumplestiltskin’s voice moved within the howl, as if the Wild Hunt passed overhead.

Once it subsided, the quiet was large. It hovered at the ceiling and in the corners of the room. Even in his fuzziness, the rectangle of the ceiling, the furniture in the room was distinct and sharply outlined. The hook, set on a bedside chest of drawers, was defined and peculiar. It gleamed in low lamplight and presented a pointed question mark.

He lay partially under a sheet, but Rumplestiltskin sprawled on his belly, uncovered. He was not quite asleep. Killian stroked is hand up and down his warm back.

“You’ve got a cute little arse.” He said.

Rumplestiltskin opened one eye, nearly obscured by a wing of his hair. Lamplight caught-out strands of silver.

“Cute?” his lip curled, dryness in his voice.

“Aye.” Killian said. With a crooked smile he added, “Were you hoping for something more recognizably malevolent? A bum people would watch as you walked and think, now that’s an evil arse.”

Rumplestiltskin shifted at the hips. It seemed to draw attention to the cuteness of his naked butt. Considering the merits of an evil arse, he said, “Mmmmaaayyybe.”

“Or, perhaps you prefer something more majestic. Beefy and sculpted. A kingly arse.”

“Might do, might do.”

“Sorry, mate. It’s a cute little arse.”

“Ah… you wretched maladjust.”

Killian’s hand stroked lower, into a territory of cute. He fondled a rich curve where arse met thigh; he ran a fingertip around dimples on either side of Rumplestiltskin’s tailbone.

Dimples of Venus. Odd, on such a man.

He said, “If it makes you feel better, Rumple, you’ve a most majestic cock. Very kingly, probably evil.”

With a soft huff, Rumplestiltskin said, “Why, thank you, dearie. That does make me feel better. How sweet of you to say.”

The nakedness, the growing clarity… Killian soaked it in. An absence of babies, all echoing shells with silent, but present questions, questions, questions. Worse than the pestering hook.

It wasn’t unusual for Rumplestiltskin to cop a subtle feel of Killian’s bum… his jeans weren’t especially tight, but they fit. The showed his form. Around a darkened corner, a wee moment out of the sight of children, Rumplestiltskin’s hand might make a warm and fond squeeze, a pat.

But, dressed to the nines as Rumplestiltskin tended to be, Killian didn’t have easy access to reciprocate. His tailored trousers were loose, his jacket yet another layer. Shirts neatly tucked-in, everything buckled and buttoned. It was always a little startling to realize there was a flesh and blood man in there.

Sleepy, Killian lay his head on Rumplestiltskin at mid-back. A heartbeat was a soft and steady pounding at his ear, a cavernous, ocean-like sound reassured him; yes, flesh and blood. He lay, supported by flesh, muscle and bone.

His hand played at Rumplestiltskin’s arse, at his inner thigh. At his new vantage, he saw a landscape of hills and deep crevasse.  Within the ocean sound, Killian heard a steady purr.

 

 

 

Lacey stood outside Rumplestiltskin’s bedroom door, her hand raised to knock. She was frozen, mouth dropped open, round-eyed. She stared at the wood-grain of the door but saw nothing.

Had she heard correctly?

Coming back into focus, she looked at the permission slip in her hand, a guardian’s signature required for a school trip into the wide, urban sprawl of Epiphany, well past its cobbled, historic downtown. She didn’t have much of a map in her head, but she’d noticed some redundancy. There was Highway 12, Historic Highway 12, Old Historic Highway 12…

The trip was to a rather celebrated aquarium and she wanted to go. But… the hell with it. She was _not_ bothering Rumplestiltskin just now. Uh-uh. Hoping to catch him in the morning, she fled. Once safely in her room, she closed the door and leaned heavily against it. She let out a long breath.

“OMG.” She announced. What she knew of texting was squat, but there were elements which had long since settled into the vernacular as actual speech. Her _teachers_ spoke it.

The room she shared with Ruby had become the official hang-out of Victor and Jefferson, thanks to the turn-table. They were present. Victor sat on the floor, doing homework as one of his weird bands, The Sugarcubes, played at a quiet volume. Jefferson’s books were laid aside. He perched on Ruby’s bed, Simon in his lap, and was applying designs around Ruby’s eyes with her eyeliner. One eye was an Egyptian mystery, the other a Bohemian flower festival.

They all glanced at her, and Jefferson asked, “What’s up?”

Lacey didn’t have words, such was her surprise. Her thoughts, when it came to grown, gay men, dealt mostly in T.V. stereotypes. She struggled to place dour and grumbling Rumplestiltskin, magical and maybe amoral, too old for such shenanigans, within her frame of reference. She struggled to place Killian, so freaking gorgeous and quite manly, within the framework and with his employer.

Lord. Was it legal? Was it… workplace sexual harassment? What a blow to the straight, female community, to have Killian snagged by Rumplestiltskin. It was a wonder women’s voices weren’t heard for miles, wailing.

Her silence managed to get everyone’s attention. They all stared at her and, quite outside of the new information whirling about in her head, it became a pointed lesson. She typically made a lot of noise, a great deal of fuss when seeking attention; she went for a splash. Simply being still, speechless and perhaps with a touch of drama had been remarkably effective.

She said, “I heard… I heard…”

She didn’t mean to draw it out, to create suspense. But look at them. Three sets of eyes were glued to her and hung on her words. Even Victor, who purported himself as above gossip was magnetized by her.

“ _What_?” Ruby demanded. She hated suspense. When stringed instruments began a slow climb to hysteria in scary movies, she left the room. She wasn’t having it, not a dot.

Collecting herself, Lacey said, “I heard Rumplestiltskin and Killian talking… I think, like, pillow talk. Like, _sex_ talk.”

They all seemed to deflate. She’d expected gasps, shock and awe, but their eyes all went back to normal. There was a projected feeling of; _oh, that_.

“Well?” she prompted. “Who knew?”

Jefferson held Simon up. As if the rabbit was doing the talking, he said, “Girl, we been knew.”

“What?” How could that be?

“Well,” Victor clarified, “We been suspect.”

Lacey looked to Ruby; surely she was startled by this information. Killian was on her list of top ten hottie-totties.

He was number five, and would be higher, but for his missing hand. Almost everyone else on the list was a celebrity.

But Ruby shrugged. “Everyone kind of thought they were a couple. You’ve heard Hyde.”

_Hyde_?? It made Lacey a little explosive. She blurted, “But.. Hyde’s an idiot! We don’t listen to Hyde.”

Oh great, she supposed she’d stepped right into that one. Now three sets of eyes looked at her with what one assumed was a parental, _well- there you go_. An annoying, _out-of-the-mouths-of-babes_ look. She rolled her eyes; yes, she got it. It was one thing to accept the pedantic satisfaction on Ruby’s face, but – the boys? It was a bit much. Even Simon seemed to be giving the look.

With a sigh, Lacey came fully into the room. She crawled onto her bed and sat there, arms hugged around her knees. How could she be the one who was oblivious to the unlikely gay couple, at large within the Shelter? She was usually the observant one. She caught onto things, she noticed. She felt a bit prideful about it.

Truly, she hadn’t seen it. She’d missed it, altogether.

“I can’t believe you’re not shocked.” She said to everyone.

Ruby said, “Well, it is kind of weird. As pairings go. But we’ve had time to get used to the idea.”

Lacey stared. When? When did this time occur?

Jefferson abandoned his make-up play and joined Lacey on her bad. He stretched out, Cleopatra, and bonked one of her knees with Simon’s head. With saucy eyes and a wicked smile, he asked, “What were they saying?” His voice dropped deep with insinuation.

Lacey pressed her lips between her teeth and blushed to her hairline. She’d had no idea that people – adults – said such things. Watching her, Jefferson said, “ _Oooh_ , it’s good, isn’t it? What is it?”

In a mutter, Lacey said, “Killian told Rumplestiltskin he has a nice ass. Or… a cute ass.”

They all appeared dumbfounded and Lacey felt a measure of control return. The couple-hood didn’t faze them, but the details might. She added, “Well, he said ‘arse’.”

All eyes flared in recognition. Yes, that was the dialect of Killian Jones. He was, without question, a man who said ‘arse’. And ‘aye’ and ‘lad’ and a whole mess of other crap that no one else said, except – sometimes – Rumplestiltskin. And, on occasion, the kids had taken to blurting ‘what the devil?’ or ‘bloody hell’, much to the consternation of their teachers.

“A cute ass?” Jefferson repeated, seeming to struggle with the notion that their weird benefactor had an ass. It could be neither cute nor acquainted with a toilet seat. Rumplestiltskin was made of snips and snails.

Nodding, Lacey said, “And a majestic, kingly, um… cock.”

The words hovered for a moment, then her friends fell-out. Away from the horror of having almost knocked on the door, even Lacey smiled. She watched mirth on the laughing faces and rocking bodies of Ruby and the boys and felt rather happy.

Almost tearful, Jefferson said, “You’re making that up.”

“I’m not. It’s what he said. Maybe teasing, but those were his words.”

“Oh, uh-uh. I can’t.” Jefferson hugged Simon with a gasp. “I ain’t never in my life.”

Ruby wiped her eyes. Victor shielded his eyes with his hand, his shoulders heaved.

Oddly, through the hysteria, the pairing began to seem more normal to Lacey. Even as she shared her complete shock, blinds abruptly taken from her eyes, she began telling herself stories of an older, maybe wealthy man and a pretty-boy. A creative sort and his admirer, who might be on the path of discovering his own creativity, his true nature. A refined, in-charge guy and ruffian with delusions of being in-charge. They all felt like new ideas to Lacey, and the ideas grew as she tried to make sense of her guardians.

Still, there was a nagging thought, a question of how it all began. How did they know one another? What was their connection?

Jefferson said, “So, Victor. Is your dick majestic? Kingly, would you say?”

Victor blushed. To reference one’s own genitalia in front of the opposite sex felt subversive. Keeping a cavalier front in place, he said, “Well, I like to think so. It’s always seemed like royalty to me.”

Jefferson laughed again and Ruby speculated, “What do you think they call each other? Like, pet names. Do they do couple things? Make a grocery list together? Stock up on toilet paper?”

Still sniggering, Jefferson intoned, “Come to me, my hairy stud-muffin.”

Lacey, feeling cutesy, said, “I love you, boo.” All giggled to think of either party as ‘Boo’.

“Sweetcheeks?” Victor said.

Ruby, voice soap opera-dramatic, said, “ _Darling_!” She flung an imaginary scarf over her shoulder. Then she wondered aloud, “What do you think they sleep in?”

They grew quiet, considering. It seemed possible to all that Rumplestiltskin grew bat-wings at night, which he then folded around himself as he hung, upside-down, too-long hair dangling, in the unspeakable attic. Even so, each one pictured him as fully dressed, down to dapper wingtips, neatly laced. Sock garters seemed a certainty.

Finally, Jefferson said, “Rumplestiltskin wears silk pajamas and a formal dressing gown… maybe a night cap. Killian wears a thong.”

They took a moment to picture and process, then the snickering began. Lacey felt Killian was more to blame than Rumplestiltskin, this go-round. The snickering grew louder and less controlled, true laughter. Suddenly there was no scenario in which Rumplestiltskin was anything other than prissy and Killian anything other than a bit unmanned. Killian was a Playboy Bunny to an affronted Hefner.

There was an abrupt and shocking _boom! boom! boom!_ on the door. The old, warped wood shook in its frame, causing everyone to nearly jump out of his or her skin. The door was flung open and there he was, the man, himself. Killian Jones glowered at them, sleepy-faced, his eyebrows a wild mess. His hair was roosterish all over and he was barefoot and bare-chested. He wore jeans, not quite done-up. All eyes could not help but follow a trail of dark hair down the middle of his torso and to a dense forest that disappeared into his jeans. It was distressingly animal and most untoward. As one, the group revised any ideas to do with a thong. Not without a serious waxing.

Four owlish faces looked up at him, the girls hugging themselves.

Killian growled, “What the devil are you lot doing up and making so much noise? Do you want to raise the dead? Or wake the babies? Pipe down and get to bed. Boys, get back to your own room before I start handing out arse-kickings.”

He stalked away, trailing a furry sort of annoyance and leaving the door open. When he’d disappeared from sight, they dared to look at one another. To make eye-contact.

Four sets of hands smacked over four mouths, each one desperately trying to smother laughter. Hysteria had set in… there was no going back.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

“Rumplestiltskin.” Mary Margaret said.

In his study, Rumplestiltskin was deep in a book and lightly sauced with a top-shelf whiskey. He didn’t take in the anxiety in Mary Margaret’s voice, nor the paleness of her face, coated in a light sheen of damp.

“Yes, dearie?”

“It’s time.” She said, throaty and ashen.

“Time for what?” he sing-songed. These children. It was always something.

Voice pained, Mary Margaret repeated, “It’s _time_.”

Rumplestiltskin’s head popped up, book flat on his lap. _Oh_. Time. He looked at Mary Margaret and saw that, indeed, it was time.

“Bloody hell.”

He stood, book and whiskey forgotten, and stared in medium-grade horror at Mary Margaret’s soaked leggings. Her maternity top was like a dress over them.

She was all business, girlish demeanor gone. Snarling at his look, she snapped, “My water broke. In the kitchen. Let’s go… come _on_.”

Ugh. Teenagers and their perverse ways. Why would anyone choose a kitchen in which to flood uterine waters? He wrinkled his nose at her, and she repeated, “Come _on_!”

Her waddle softened him. Likely, there was no blood getting to her brain to inform her choices. He wrapped her shoulders in a throw, surely it was just the thing, and called out for Killian to bring the car around.

David and Emma both appeared. In her strained and urgent manner, Rumplestiltskin’s arm around her, Mary Margaret had become a small tyrant. She barked orders. Her bag, pre-packed for this very day, was in her room. David and Emma were to come along. Everyone needed to –

… She went still and clutched her belly, not breathing. Her face became worryingly pasty, then a hectic red glow suffused her cheeks. Remembering, David held her upper arms and demanded, “Breathe! Breathe!” He demonstrated a rhythm, Lamaze breaths that made him look like a monkey, and Mary Margaret stared at him as though he’d gone off his nut.

Emma came to her side, opposite Rumplestiltskin – who still stared down his nose. He objected to all of this. The evening had been so pleasant. Emma rubbed Mary Margaret’s back.

She said, “He’s right. Do the breathing, Mary Margaret, it’ll help. Start slow.”

Mary Margaret’s gaze shifted to Emma and became fixed. She seemed to respond to Emma more than she had to David. They breathed together, slow and fast, until she could stand up straight and walk again.

Other kids showed up, drawn by high drama. Trailing in among them, Victor asked, “What happened in the kitchen?” Then, “Oh.” His expression not unlike Rumplestiltskin’s.

Hyde hung back, hunched and frowning. Peter stared at all goings-on, bizarre and frightful in his intense interest. Babies in playpens and bouncy swings and roller seats all looked at Mary Margaret, wide-eyed and a touch worshipful; even the wee raisons.

To Rumplestiltskin, Mary Margaret said, “Do you think you could hustle it up, old man?”

The gathered crowd collectively gasped. Even Hyde couldn’t hold back a wheeze of startled machinery. Ruby and Lacey backed-up a step, as if Rumplestiltskin might explode and there was a danger of shrapnel. Jefferson held Simon close to his chest; this was all a bit much for one small rabbit.

“Listen, missy.” Rumplestiltskin growled. “If you weren’t such a slut in the first place – “

There was another group-gasp. Was he allowed to just say that? Were there authorities who should know? Aside from Hyde, the kids had come to view Mary Margaret as even more holy than before she got knocked-up. The holiness did not allow for logic.

However, Rumplestiltskin’s words meant nothing to Mary Margaret. It was clear she was busy and on a schedule. She had things to get done. Exasperated, she panted, “For crying out loud.”

Not quite as distracted, David got in Rumplestiltskin’s face. “Hey! Just because you’re our guardian –“

Showing teeth, Rumplestiltskin rounded on him. “ _You_! You half-wit, sharp-shooting git.”

Killian arrived, surveyed the scene and rolled his eyes grandly. He grumbled, “Bloody hell.” With long strides, he approached Mary Margaret and surprised her by sweeping her up and carrying her in his arms. At another time, she would replay this in her head and swoon. Heading for the door, he said, “Come on… whoever is to be in attendance. The chariot awaits.”

“Indeed.” Rumplestiltskin agreed. Tick-tock.”

As one, the babies breathed, “ _Ahhhhhh_ ….”

It made everything stop. Speech, movement, contractions, time… As the chill that took the room eased, the ghostly sound becoming something no one was certain they’d actually heard, everyone looked at the babies. Even Killian turned, Mary Margaret still and yet unsettled in his arms.

Ill at ease, Rumplestiltskin eyed Ruby and Lacey. His brow-raise included Victor and Jefferson. “Look after them.” He ordered, chin jutting out to a gang of beguiled babies.

No one looked happy about it, but the babies were oblivious. They were in rapture, as if they beheld the infant lion king at the new birth of the eastern sun. A few turned oddly triumphant eyes to Peter, who appeared not overly perturbed.

At a clip, Rumplestiltskin followed Mary Margaret’s entourage to the car.

 

 

 

The remaining kids stared at the infants in their charge. There were no more unexpected voices, but the babies’ eyes seemed overly intelligent, very clear. Very full; each infant exhalation was a longing for speech.

“They give me the heebie-jeebies.” Jefferson said.

Striding forward, Hyde smacked Jefferson on the back of is head. “Everything gives you the heebie-jeebies.” He growled.

He picked up a baby from a bouncy seat and held it at arm’s length. It was a pod in footie pajamas of a black and white stripe, a small prisoner. Its limbs hung, its small and sweet mouth made fish-like motions as it tasted air and tested the dexterity and texture of its lips and tongue. Its eyes held Hyde’s steadily, but for a moment when its gaze shifted to Peter.

The babies gave Hyde the heebie-jeebies as well, but he was unwilling to voice it. He was so much bigger than they.

“What do we do with them?” Ruby asked.

Victor considered. What he’d learned of health, healing and the human body had rarely touched upon infancy. He realized there was a gap in his studies. He wondered if they should touch the babies’ heads to check on the proper healing of soft spots. Or, probably better not to touch those things. Maybe they should assess developmental milestones… place the babies on their bellies to see if they pushed-up on their hands. Or crawled.

He suppressed a shudder. The idea of raison babies on the prowl made him squirm with discomfort. It was already very clear that their eyes focused and tracked.

Hyde tossed his baby in the air, generally freaking everyone out. However, the baby was delighted. It was quiet, but smiled a wide, gummy, open-mouthed smile. Up it went, _I’m flying!_ to be caught by Hyde’s big hands, swung low and then tossed back up. In his dark and malevolent way, red-eyed and oddly scarred, Hyde smiled back.

Jefferson asked, “Do we… should we just throw them around?”

He looked at Lacey and she shrugged. When it came to the non-verbal, she was more of a cat-girl than a baby-girl. She said, “Maybe we should tell them a story.”

“Good idea.” Said Peter.

It was a ripple amongst teens and babies. Peter could be such a shadow-presence… one was aware of him, of his oddness, and yet he so often faded into the background. Speaking, he was suddenly there, as if he’d stepped out of the wallpaper.

With his response to Lacey, he reappeared. Even Hyde felt goosebumped, nipples suddenly visible under his tight, long-sleeved tee.

Peter added, “While you tell them a story, you should let them have some milk.” His voice was a quiet rasp. It was rather like Rumplestiltskin’s, except his seemed to have a congenital snottiness.

All of the babies swiveled their heads to Lacey. They were a gathering of burrowing owls, eyes large, attentive. A herd of meerkats, all alert to one direction.

Their eyes implored Lacey, who felt dizzy, and – in her head – they said, _yesssss_ …..

 

 

 

Rumplestiltskin did not like the hospital. He did not care much for the world beyond Old Historic Downtown Epiphany. Once the ‘old’ was dropped, even if ‘historic’ was still employed, the works became polluted with cement and plastic. Florescent or neon lighting. An endless serpent of highway, grown all out of control, four-to-lanes on each side of a median, writhing with the force of many vehicles. In darkness, the headlights and taillights were infinite. They evoked Jormungand, who would one day rise.

It seemed the hospital had been under construction since pre-diluvian times. There was a crane and a big, skeletal appendage, reaching up to a partially completed catwalk. The appendage had hovered for years, it seemed, and appeared to be part of the actual building… it began to blend to the two towers, North and South; cement, glass and steel, connected, (mostly), by the catwalk.

His preference was a murky coziness. Low lighting and a comfortable uncertainty about what lurked. Cuddlesome, old chairs and books that smelled of age. Heavy wood and ancient stone. The scent of whiskey, wood-rot and the failing glue of wallpaper.

The lights of the hospital were bright and induced a foggy, yet piercing headache. It was on the verge of looking like the white-out moment of confused dream or even explosive orgasm, but without the pleasant, physical associations. There was a confusion of blips and beeps, things that rolled by and smelled antiseptically sharp, a scent which could not quite mask the odors of sickness, of vomit and blood and feces; of desperation, fear and ammonia.

Magic was so much better. Perhaps not sterile in the least, yet certainly cleaner.

Nevertheless, one did not wish to be involved in the whole birthing business, at least when it came to humans. He was pleased enough when babies arrived at his gate, wholly freed of the bellies of their mothers, potential currency.

But to have to actually extract one…. Either with the same barbarism by which a chicken plops out an egg, or by something as harrowing as opening the belly, ferreting around in guts for that most secretive of first homes…

It was dreadful. Why on earth would anyone do it? He would undertake neither of those things at home, magic or no. He wanted nothing to do with Mary Margaret’s nethers or guts… he would leave that to young David, the miserable wretch.

His last sighting of Mary Margaret was as they hurried her down a long hallway in a wheelchair. David trotted alongside and Emma remained next him in uncertainty.

Mary Margaret wailed, “No! I changed my mind! I don’t want to!”

Oh-ho. Rumplestiltskin snorted, then felt Emma’s glare. He waved his hands down the hall. “Go. Shoo. Go… do the things women do. Help your friend.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Those green eyes… she was really quite intrusive. She was worse than the babies at getting under one’s skin. He felt observed on the inside, a strikingly unpleasant feeling, and it occurred to him that she probably had no idea of what women did. Still. She left off and followed her friends down the hall.

He went to the appropriately named waiting room and sat down next to Killian, who was flipping through a magazine, ‘In Style’, and looked completely baffled. The gloss and imagery therein was like a sudden-onset spaceship.

“How long do you think this will take?” Rumplestiltskin grumbled. The girl was young and spry. The pregnancy seemed to have been a normal one. Surely she’d squirt her whelp out, an escaped and slippery watermelon seed, and they could all get on with the usual order.

Killian shrugged and asked, “Do you want to see the six accessories you must have, come Spring?”

“ _Do_ I.” Rumplestiltskin smiled. He leaned into Killian, staring at shiny paper under harsh light, surrounded by a fug of humans and non-breathing, plastic or silk plants. The images he beheld were as mysterious to him as they were to Killian, and yet sent out a soft spell of forbidden allure. Much of the allure was in shades of blushing pink and shimmery gold. They aped both magic and sex.

People. What mysteries. What fools.

 

 

 

 

It had gone very well.

“You did great!” the nursed cheered for Mary Margaret, pointedly not commenting on her age or diminutive stature.

“Well done.” Said the doctor, who seemed to have arrived just in time to catch the baby. He was there and gone; the nurses did the heavy lifting. “What a trooper. This girl’s a fighter.”

Mary Margaret beamed. She looked like she’d fought in a war, and – all around, being swiftly tidied and cleaned – was the blood to prove it. Her body shook alarmingly with post-partum chills, but she smiled and waited to be reunited with her baby.

Emma and David, on the other hand, were traumatized. The PTSD would continue well into adulthood. Mary Margaret, so it was declared, was a trooper; she toed the line, she was strong and in-it-to-win-it. But David had passed out and had to be revived by over-worked nurses. Already occupied with Mary Margaret, they hustled him out of the way and he’d blearily watched, in abject horror, as his child emerged from his girlfriend.

Emma tried not to look. She tried to remain at Mary Margaret’s head, the bones of her hand in a painful crunch, squeezed by Mary Margaret. The urge to scold Mary Margaret with an _Ow!_ was overwhelming. Under the circumstances, she resisted.

Even from her relatively modest vantage, she saw too much. The alien and weird convulsing of the belly… she’d already gone through shock in the last few months, unprepared for Mary Margaret to show her the odd, relief sculpture of a hand or foot, pressed or kicked from the inside. Mary Margaret had marveled, as Emma supposed one did.

But it had frightened her. All of it… the changes in Mary Margaret’s body, the take-over of the bay, parasitic, stealing whatever nutrients Mary Margaret did not readily supply. The poking, as if the baby might bully its way out. The way the baby insisted Mary Margaret must sleep, and sleep she must, wherever she was.

And now the birth. The moving belly, the blood-and _-stuff_ covered head that was becoming visible beyond the belly, between the clench and violent tremble of Mary Margaret’s sweat-slicked thighs.

Good God, it was a nightmare. Emma could not imagine how her tiny friend was doing it. Through the entire pregnancy, she’d been in a bizarre position of negating her feelings… pretending away all she felt about David in order to support Mary Margaret. To be the friend she was supposed to be.

It was to support David as well, although she’d had moments of wondering if she hated him, just a little. Then again, if he was to suddenly realize feelings for herself and abandon the girl he’d gotten pregnant… well. She supposed he wouldn’t be David and she wouldn’t be crazy for him.

But now… holding Mary Margaret though the birth of David’s child?

After the wildness of the delivery, Mary Margaret’s screams and a cacophony of encouraging voices, Emma felt bleak. She’d been crying, she hadn’t realized. It looked as though David was too numb to cry. He looked a little stoned.

The two of them stood, wobbly and forever changed, on either side of Mary Margaret, Our Most Beloved. When the nurses appeared with the baby, they both went stiff.

“Here’s your baby girl.” The nurse told Mary Margaret, and her arms were out and open upon the instant. No hesitation. She seemed to recognize her daughter as if by scent, and wasted no time in claiming her. In contrast, Emma and David stood, like statues.

Mary Margaret cuddled her baby, cooing. The nurse said something about getting Mary Margaret set up in a recovery room. After some rest for mother and baby, a lactation specialist would arrive for a consultation on breastfeeding. Who knew? Where was Hyde when you needed him?

All information washed over Emma. She understood that Mary Margaret would be moved. She would follow dumbly, as would an equally dumb David, who had yet to truly acknowledge his daughter, with either touch or words.

The baby had dark hair, like Mary Margaret. Where it dried in patches, it stood like dandelion fluff. Her eyes briefly opened and were so dark, it was impossible to tell the color.

Mary Margaret said, “I want to call her Emmaliana.”

Emma looked up. She thought; what? Without meaning to, she murmured, “Nooo…”

But Mary Margaret was awash in a baby-fueled bliss and completely befucked hormones. She missed Emma’s dismay.

She said, “I never knew my mother. Or any family. You’re a sister to me, Emma, my best friend. I don’t want to name her for anyone but you.”

Emma tried to smile. It felt staged. She glanced at David, who stared at the baby as if wondering… who in the world are _you_? Mary Margaret patted her hand and crooned _Emmaliana_ to the baby. It was settled.

But Emma could only think, no…. Please don’t curse her with my life.

She felt like a complete fraud.

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

Lacey said, “The sky was filled with the riders of Muspelheim, screaming their way to the City of the Gods. They were people of fire; they’d come to burn the city to the ground.

“The seas were filled with the ships of the Giants, the ships of men and Hella’s ship. Her ship was made of magic, dreams and the bones of wraiths. It was steered by Loki, her father. He was fire-folk. His own magic fueled their journey. The sails were flame and lit the storms and revenant-heavy sky. The sails made their own, roaring wind.

“Jormungand had grown into a monster, a serpent-dragon-beast of Titan proportions. He rose from the sea. His body made great waves, tsunamis that flooded the land. The City of the Gods was beset with fire and water.

“Fenrir, black-furred and bloodthirsty, bigger than any wolf that ever walked the earth, stood stiff-legged at the fore of Hella’s ship. He awaited battle. He howled, snout lifted to the ash on the wind, fire blazing against darkness and death. His brother, deep in the belly of the sea, rolled in answer, his own howl like the phantom of the great, black, roiling ocean.”

 

 

They all _looked_ at her. The babies were spellbound. They leaned forward, as if into a gentle wind of warm, spun sugar, raining stickily down from the noise of a cotton-candy machine. They yawned. The air was sweet.

Ruby looked as Lacey as if she beheld a stranger who had just done something not well understood; a bow to Mecca, a spoken verse of exorcism. _Who are you_ , her dark eyes asked? Or, maybe it was _, who do you think you are?_ Lacey had no answer for either question.

Victor and Jefferson looked jumpy and Hyde looked… How did he look? Lacey couldn’t put a word to it. His dark eyes had grown darker. He looked as thoughtful as he was likely to look. He was very still and his gaze felt as if it might swallow her up. He tasted her as the babies tasted her words.

The fact was this: she had no idea what she’d said. She heard the words, she saw images in her head. She somewhat followed a narrative. But they were not her words, they had not come from her. She’d opened her mouth to say ‘once upon a time’, and the other words had spilled out. She was like a faerie-tale girl, tested by forces malevolent or good. She opened her mouth to speak and instead of words, out fell diamonds, toads, coins…

Reluctantly, she dragged her eyes to meet Peter’s. It felt as though she literally dragged. Her gaze felt heavy, weighted.

The words came from him. She couldn’t make a sensible explanation of it, but it was so. He was the worker of the words and he’d chosen to place them inside of her.

She met the green of his eyes that yet sent out a red-orange glow of fire, and shivered. She felt, on her skin and in her head, as if he touched her.

 

 

 

It had been a long, weird day. It persisted into night and would continue into the following morning. Routine was shattered, the reassurance of grown-ups, a solid world, untroubled by magic or _thin places_ was gone.

This was the sort of thing that drove Jefferson directly to his thumb. His head couldn’t take so much uncertainty, so much dream-like strangeness. While up and about and bearing witness with the others, he’d been okay. More or less. Not anymore.

They’d collectively managed to get the babies down for the night. He’d never been in their room, before. It added to the strangeness, for it was a dream-like room. A large room, it was a long rectangle, one wall lined with tall windows. Each window was crowned with another, smaller window in the shape of a half-moon, sitting on its diameter.

The smaller windows were uncovered and made of stained glass, colors dark in the night. The tall windows were covered in long, white drapes, a row of quiet spirits. The windows were closed, yet the curtains fretted restlessly along the floor.

Rows of cribs – that’s what the room held. There were other things, all of them old and rickety-looking… a changing table, a few dresser drawers. There was a toy chest surfaced in yellow and white enamel and a person-sized teddy bear in a rocking chair that filled Jefferson with frank terror. The bear held an open book and wore a serene smile.

Rumplestiltskin’s magic, often a subtle thing which Jefferson could happily ignore, was in full play. There were no mobiles over the cribs, no nightlights or lamps, but fireflies seemed to fill the darkness. The ceiling was lost to the dark, but five-pointed stars glowed in its recesses. They glowed in reds, blues, violets and golds. They glowed with a neon intensity, then softly, barely visible until they pulsed with life once more.

Separate from the stars, the firefly lights drifted about the room like dust motes. They were all over… the lights glowed on the faces of babies and older kids. They glowed on the high polish of the wooden floor and threw flickering shadows on the walls. The room was alive with movement.

The babies, once herded to their room, seemed hypnotized. This must be how Killian managed all of them; they put up no fuss. They stared at the lights within darkness and a hum, felt more than heard, filled Jefferson’s body.

He had to get out of there. The girls were charmed, enchanted, but Jefferson had an intolerance for enchantment. It extracted a price from his head and, while in the babies’ room, he felt he might never be grounded again. Some part of him would forever roam, lost in foreign and twilight landscapes, mind at large while his body fell to serious thumb-suckery.

It’s a dance floor, he told himself. That’s all. Rumplestiltskin, (who could know his ways?), had made a disco of the babies’ room. Somewhere, up there, was a mirrored ball, spinning and spinning. Jefferson couldn’t truly convince himself, and bolted as soon as he could do so without unduly alerting Hyde.

Hyde. Hyde was good with the babies. Jefferson did not know what to do with that information. Hyde had always seemed utterly indifferent to them… they were little, unformed non-people, not yet with voices or separate identities. Even Jefferson viewed them as a collective.

In an edgy alliance with the other kids, everyone playing house, Hyde walked and bounced babies. He spoke to them in his monotone growl and they drank it up. He held bottles to their seeking mouths and they gazed into his eyes, rapt.

Nothing was normal. Peter prodded a baby’s lips with the rubbery nipple of a bottle, then took a suck, himself. As babies were laid in cribs, a soft chiming of bells sounded from… from _where_? Jefferson felt like ghosts roamed the halls. It was a real thing, raising the dead. No wonder Killian and Rumplestiltskin were so vigilant against it. The fabled wife of Rumplestiltskin rattled her chains in the attic, probably righteously pissed-off about Killian. Something dark, hunched and clammy dragged itself around the crawlspace, its scent sick and feral.

By the time he and Victor went to bed, Jefferson was a mess. Rumplestiltskin and Killian were still gone, off at the hospital, and it left him feeling adrift. He held tight to Simon, his eyes open in the dark. Each time his eyes closed, he heard Lacey’s voice, telling the tale of Ragnarok in a voice possessed. He saw the craggy head of a monster rise up from the sea. Water and venom dripped from its odd, misshapen shagginess, sizzling as it hit the sea and making craters in the earth, sulfuric and corrosive.

He saw the ensorcelled babies, staring. He saw Peter sucking milk from a bottle, (how could his thumb sucking be worse?), and didn’t understand why it rattled him so much. Peter’s eyes at half-mast as he sucked, light flickering in a darkness of green, like a lit match.

If only the grown-ups were home, tucked away in Rumplestiltskin’s room, being gay or whatever. He needed the anchor of it. Something reliable. He needed _normal_ , to watch mindless T.V. and eat something starchy.

He needed the largeness of the twilight world, one in which he sometimes felt trapped, to get out of his head.

Feeling desperate, he left his bed. He crawled into Victor’s, bringing Simon along. Together, they spooned up to Victor’s back.

“Okay?” Jefferson asked, barely a gasp before his thumb found his mouth. Fuck. Bloody hell.

“Yeah, okay.” Victor whispered.


	14. Chapter 14

David held his daughter under Mary Margaret’s watchful eye. Emmaliana. He’d thought he would feel an instant connection… Mary Margaret had certainly felt it. She was bonded at once.

Emmaliana was devoted to sleep. Having witnessed her arrival, something he wished he could un-see, David understood. It had to tucker one out, such gruesome and violent transition, both mother and baby.

And now Emmaliana was here, present. Out in the world, with its brightness and hard edges., its unpredictability. Electrical outlets, stairwells, field mice and spiders; she was in it.

She was markedly different from the other babies at the Shelter. He’d grown used to their peculiarity, their very direct gaze, so that now his daughter seemed terribly unfinished. Fragile. She was vulnerable.

He wanted to protect her; that was something. He didn’t yet know her, but he wouldn’t let harm come to her.

Often when people remarked on an infant’s resemblance to one parent or the other, David couldn’t see it. He saw only a round-eyed, puppyish being who resembled babies everywhere, not classifiable until it grew into its true features. If the baby was dressed, it was rare that he could even tell if it was a boy or a girl.

His perception was different, now. Emmaliana resembled him not at all. She was clearly all girl, and she looked entirely like Mary Margaret. He wondered that he had a role in her making at all.

Her dark, fluffy hair… he thought her eyes were a very dark blue, but it was hard to tell. Her small brow fretted at times and her blood seemed too lively under her pale skin. A few seconds before she let loose with a cry, a strange flush mottled her extraordinarily soft cheeks, skin like flower petals.

The crying was upsetting. Emmaliana put off heat when she cried, the sound of it like an urgent car alarm that couldn’t be shut off. Her cry was completely opposite from the Shelter babies and their enduring silence. It demanded – _do something!_ – and David didn’t know what to do.

Her heat infected him and made him want to get in her face. _What? What do you want?_ Feeling fearful of himself, he took her to Mary Margaret, his face a plaintive cry for help. She was so calm, so practical. In the throes of an exhaustion he couldn’t imagine, she smiled. She willingly took a red-faced, screaming bundle of hot nerves and fragility away from him, and often applied it to a breast.

Man, was that weird. He was so torn as to how to feel about it. Aroused? Frightened? Ashamed of both of those feelings? Her body had greatly changed and it was clear she now regarded it as in service to her child.

The noise stopped and the quiet, a hush filled with a soft, sucking sound, was blessed. Heat drained from both Emmaliana and David, and Mary Margaret reached for his hand.

That was peculiar, too. They were a unit, parents and child. David was both a part of the unit, part of the whole, and still very outside of it.

Mary Margaret said, “When she’s crying, she’s probably hungry or needs her diaper changed. Sometimes she just wants you to hold her and walk around.” With a giggle that was a quick and startling reminder that she was just a girl, she added, “She likes it when I sing to her, but I’m not sure you should try that.”

David smiled, his eyes on the suckling baby. He had a terrible singing voice, tone-deaf and flat. Music tended to wash over him, lyrics just more sound. When he sang, he just made words up.

Emmaliana’s tiny hands opened and closed. She went _nom-nom-nom_ , breathing deeply through her nose. Before they’d left the hospital, the lactation specialist told Mary Margaret her baby was a good eater… she had a strong suck.

Geez. The things people said. It was a new world where genitals were frankly examined and discussed, as was the frequency and quality of poop.

“Well, I have to know what’s going on with her.” Mary Margaret said, shrugging when David was intensely put off by the investigation of a diaper’s contents.

He wondered if anyone had ever been so intimate with him. Had someone once taken keen interest in his poop? It was an embarrassing thought, yet he also felt a little envious of his daughter.

He was a slow starter to fatherhood, but Mary Margaret’s love for Emmaliana was clear and enormous. The baby was loved. She was wanted.


	15. Chapter 15

Emmaliana’s cries drifted through the Shelter like the prowling of a ghost. They spooked everyone, but for Mary Margaret. The small fuss of waking, _nyng-ing-ing_ , the red-faced shriek of _I am inconsolable! Do something!_ Even the little gurgles and talking-to-herself sounds were so very different from the silent stare of the Shelter babies. David watched in amazement, still rather alienated, as Mary Margaret loosed a swollen breast from an amped-up bra that in no way resembled the brevity of her former bosom-wear. Seeing or sensing the milk-heavy offering, Emmaliana _lunged_. She made a hungry sound, like,   _hnnngggg_!

Mary Margaret was fine with it. Had he shown such unrestrained enthusiasm for her breasts, she might have swatted him. Or laughed him off. He felt a little jealous.

Though Mary Margaret seemed to feel that breast feeding her child was a must, a practical, necessary thing that needn’t be hidden away, David felt very private about it. Wary, in fact; a feeling that couldn’t penetrate Mary Margaret’s fog of feel-good hormones, a warm and softly milk-scented cocoon of bliss.

He grew an unexpected empathy, his belly in tune with his daughter and his sense of agitation in tune with a new cycle, at work within his girlfriend. He _felt_ the build-up, then let down of milk, and became antsy. He steered Mary Margaret to their shared room, for Rumplestiltskin had allowed it. She’d moved out of the room she’d shared with Emma and into his room.

David felt, deeply and without logic, that Peter should not witness the feeding.

 

 

Though things, routine returned to normal, normalish, Jefferson remained just a little unhinged. Crawling into Victor’s bed had become part of the norm. Victor allowed it.

He began to wait for it, unable to approach sleep until he felt the covers turned back, a weight and dip in the bed. Reassured by these things, by warmth against his back and the soft-yet-knobby feeling of Simon, pressed between the two of them, Victor would relax. He felt the release of his muscles affect Jefferson. It made a little spell, an aura around them, and there it was safe to sleep.

 

 

 

Lacey kept secrets. It was getting to be old hat, as she still kept the secret of what she did with Ruby. She kept secret her desire to be discovered and her growing dislike of those she saw as privileged, the very ones whose ranks she wished to join. She kept the secret of Peter.

In school, he noticed as she looked at another girl’s earrings. They were sparkling, little studs, catching light and making prisms bounce around. They probably weren’t diamonds, she thought, but even crystal was beyond her means. She stared, dazzled by the sparkle and torn between admiration and envy.

The girl, herself, seemed so unaware. She pushed her hair behind her ear, keeping it out of her face as she looked down at her work. Lacey could barely focus. The charm that held her was broken only once, as she felt a ticklish sense of feelers… a spider-leg crawling along once side of her face, shifting strands of her hair.

She brought her hand to her face and looked up to see Peter, staring at her while his pen stood, point down, an upright soldier on his desk. He smiled.

After school, when the Shelter kids gathered at the school gates for the walk up to the cliffs, Lacey felt a buzzing sort of warmth at the hip-pocket of her jeans. It was squirmy, demanding attention. At her side, Peter asked, “What’s it got in its pocketses?”

She reached in. She pulled out the studs. They dazzled in the pale rosiness of her palm and her sharp, blue-eyed gaze lifted to Peter’s green, terribly fae eyes.

“Nice.” He said. He folded her fingers protectively over the studs, briefly holding her hand. “They’ll look pretty on you.”

He admitted nothing and Lacey didn’t know what to do. Should she say thank you, when he made no direct connection between himself and the earrings? Should she return them? Yes, she thought she should, but her stomach went tight with the thought that the girl had _everything_. She had every desire that crossed her mind, provided by her parents, by an allowance. The earrings were probably a trinket, a passing fancy.

She put the studs in place at her earlobes, and Peter, again, said, “Nice.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed her face.

She liked this, Lacey realized. Just as she’d liked being an honorary wolf in Epiphany, having Peter buy her a muffin and use magic on the privileged kids. Her skin flushed with his subtle touches and she felt as if he left a sparkle of moth dust in his wake. Her skin was glitter-touched. She looked up to see Hyde, wary and dark, looking on with an odd expression.

Anointed with crystal and magic, she fell into step beside Peter. Every so often, their knuckles brushed against one another. Moth dust awoke and shimmered, leaving a trail of powdered mica where they tread.

 

 

 

Killian Jones was not the same after the arrival of Emmaliana. He was restless, pacing and tense with a need to break into a run. But, to where?

Things were not entirely clear, but neither were they wrapped in layers of dream. The world he walked was no longer cushioned and soft.

It was the baby, herself. Sometimes Mary Margaret handed her to Killian to hold for a moment, and the baby, a-squirm in the crook of his arm, disturbed. She seemed warmer than the other babies, a wee furnace. She was alert and made demands, between naps, and yet her voice was not in his head, like the other creatures. It was very much outside of his head. She had a voice, shrill and heat-inducing, and she used it at her own discretion. She trained the bigger people to respond, post haste. All now goose-stepped to her call.

… Possibly, she judged him. Sometimes she looked at him with cartoon-like eyes of dark blue, round and overly direct, her small brow concerned. _What’s wrong with you?_ said the look. _You don’t belong_.

It was unbalancing. Killian visited with the other babies, simply to feel in place. Their soft voices in his head did not exactly form words… their voices were the rustling of leaves, the quiet chuckle of a brook. Still, they soothed. They helped to restore the sense of dream which had become a norm.

He visited, too, with Rumplestiltskin. There, he sought clarity, but it was specific and pointed. It was clarity that yet buffered him from questions. Rumplestiltskin obliged and Killian spent time in his bed, grounding himself with Rumplestiltskin’s body, his skin, his breath. His hands and mouth.

 

 

 

 

The wallpaper in Emma’s bedroom began to grow. Rather, the faded, rose-print pattern grew. The roses, a pale blush that was almost white in places, suddenly seeped color. The walls bled, color spreading in a veiny way to suffuse petals, crimson here, a jeweled, deep pink, there.

Leaves unfurled, green and gold. Stems greened up as well, and began to climb. They spread and sprawled, twisting, escaping the wallpaper to creep over the ceiling.

Emma stood in her doorway, mouth hanging open. The roses made of her room a cage of flowers. They grew over the bed that had been Mary Margaret’s. The scent of roses was heavy, sharp and sweet. It stung Emma’s throat and made her feel dizzy.

Mary Margaret arrived at her side, holding the small and expressive Emmaliana. How Emma hated the name. They baby could not be less like herself, which she supposed was for the best.

Mary Margaret’s face mirrored Emma’s. She stood at the threshold of her old bedroom, lips parted, eyes as rounded as her daughter’s. Unlike Emma, she’d loved the old wallpaper, the rustic print of roses. She’d been sad to leave it for David’s more Spartan quarters.

It was faded no more. It was vivid and somehow lewd, rollicking with a sense lust. It grew before her eyes, writhing. Its perfume was like a drug.

With a little gurgle of a laugh, a tinkling, merry sound, Emmaliana leaned away from Mary Margaret with a startling strength. She was growing so fast, it made Mary Margaret cast a fretful eye upon the roses, in their mad rush. Emmaliana reached a small, chubby arm into the bedroom, tiny hand grasping.

 

 

 

Nothing was the same. For a time, everyone pretended that things would go back to normal, or at least normal for the Shelter. Jefferson was desperate in his pretense and Victor began to passionately nurture pretense, on his behalf.

More than anyone, Mary Margaret pretended. Even after watching the wallpaper roses grow, watching her baby reach for magic in precocious, spit-bubble blowing delight, she pretended.

No one was convinced. Nevertheless, time marched on. Unlike the Shelter babies, Emmaliana grew, marking the movement of time.

Ruby dreamt of wolf-girls, walking dark paths at night, drawing in the dirt with sticks. They told each other ghost stories. They held hands and sang under a low, red moon.

Emma’s room could not be lived in. The roses were hale, hearty and thorny. Where pruned back, vigorous new shoots budded out. They took over the room entirely, and she had to enlist David and Killian to help her hack her way to her clothes, her scant belongings. As they cut and slashed, she felt the bloodiness of it. The roses, which should not even _be_ , hurt. They felt bitter resentment. Their brutal regeneration was out of revenge.

She moved into Lacey and Ruby’s room, no longer of the mindset to seek out her own room. The Shelter was full of empty rooms; but, could they be said to be empty, truly? The air of the estate was newly lively with things unspoken and not understood. Even Rumplestiltskin seemed edgy, alert. His caution was like an open chasm of uncertainty in the minds of the kids.

Ruby was overly dreamy, but glad for Emma’s presence. Like Victor and Jefferson, they shared a bed. They took a similar comfort in it.

Lacey was a closed book. Normally expressive, unable to be otherwise, she shut down. Her eyes went flat, revealing nothing. The stranger the Shelter felt, the less Lacey seemed to be fully _there_. When she was talkative, her eyes lit and a bit wild, she was with Peter.

Hyde, too, seemed to withdraw. His quietness was watchful. It disturbed, more than his growl. The other kids almost forgot he was around until there was a sudden, peripheral sense of feral darkness _. Oh, hello, Evil_. He materialized. Dark, narrowed eyes, sullenly red. Sideburns bristling with black-heartedness. He glowered.

All had anticipated an upset of routine. A smell of strained peas and baby spit-up, yet more trips to Epiphany for over-priced diapers. Difficulty in school due to the teenaged mother in their midst. They all had varying degrees of understanding how much or little change a baby that belonged to one of them would bring. None had anticipated what had actually descended upon them.

David’s tension grew. Though he was not certain as to why, his distrust of Peter grew. He wanted Peter nowhere near Emmaliana and was vigilant in keeping the two separated.

However, Emmaliana was not the target.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

“She’s gone.” David said, wild eyed and flushed a hectic pink. It mottled over his cheeks and chest. His daughter was pressed against his bare skin, red-faced, livid, squalling like a siren. She woke the Shelter. Bleary young humans stumbled about.

“Who is gone?” Rumplestiltskin snapped, sharp. Looking at him, Jefferson thought, _foxy-loxy_.

To everyone’s relief, he wore dark pajamas. There was an element to it that could be considered comedic, though none could pin-point why. His overall demeanor was one of bedroom slippers, smoking jackets and a bedtime digestif. It was better than nudity, however, or even a (one assumed) dad-like presentation of boxers and socks. Tightie whities? Briefs… in surprising colors and patterns? No one could be prepared for such.

Behind him, in the shadow and murk of his bedroom, Killian was sitting up in the bed. He appeared rather less clothed. All of the kids tried not to look, not to acknowledge that it could even be, but his bareness in their guardian’s bed was magnetic to the eye.

Distraught, David said, “ _Mary Margaret_. I can’t find her, anywhere. Em’s hungry and Mary Margaret is gone!”

It was difficult to communicate over the baby’s shrieks. In their room, the Shelter babies lay in wide-eyed silence in their cribs. _God gods_ , they thought. The ruckus. If only they could give voice to what had gone awry.

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes wandered over gathering children. He settled on… _that_ one. The annoying, meddlesome child. He crooked a finger at Victor, insufferable know-it-all. He would do.

“Take this baby to the kitchen and find some formula with which to mollify her.” Baby formula, puppy formula, bird-mash. Surely anything would suffice.

“Me?” Victor looked like an affronted and bewildered stick-insect.

“Yes, you, boy. Chop-chop. She’s woken the dead.” Rumplestiltskin’s eyes seemed to indicate that this was a truth, a fact.

“Hyde’s actually better at – “

“ _Please_ , Victor.” David said, a grunt through his teeth. He handed Emmaliana to Victor and Victor felt the amped-up heat of both father and daughter.

Wordlessly, dismayed, he accepted the hand-off and carried Emmaliana in an awkward way. Jefferson followed, trailing Simon. _Rumple-bumple. Foxy-loxy_.

Victor’s mention of Hyde tickled at Rumplestiltskin.  The middle finger and thumb of his right hand rubbed against one another in a tight circle and he eyed the wolf. Dark, sullen, pulled back from the others. This was all standard issue. What was amiss?

Another sort of wolf, Killian, approached from behind. He’d furtively slipped into jeans, but captivated all with the hairy masculinity of his top half. Rumplestiltskin registered the familiar, rough feeling, but continued to consider Hyde. He blinked, focus returned. His finger and thumb halted.

“Where is Peter?” he asked.

With no change of expression, Hyde growled, “Gone.”

 

 

 

 

Lacey closed herself away in an unused room. Her earrings were warm at her ears, an odd feeling. She should take them out, she thought, get rid of them. Little sparks of fire, they were infecting her. She was infected with Peter’s magic. He’d targeted her with ease.

Hugging her knees, she rocked herself. She couldn’t stop having selfish thoughts. Stupid thoughts, like; _Yay! No school!_ Thoughts that Peter would reappear at any moment and Mary Margaret would have been out on a wee walk-about. These things would happen because he wouldn’t just… leave her. Would he? What had been the point of the strange flirtation, the gifts of magic?

Had he wanted her? Did he care for her?

Stupid thoughts, selfish thoughts. She’d once looked down on Peter. Hyde’s little puppy, swallowed up in his own too-big clothes. A boy whose development lagged not only behind other boys, but also the girls. The sort of boy to whom grown-ups gave assurance, _don’t worry, you’re a slow starter. You’ll come into a growth spurt._ Or, maybe not, they silently thought.

He’d made her feel special when the part of her that waited, that _knew_ she’d be discovered insisted that it was he who should have been grateful to have her attention. _He_ should have felt special, surprised and delighted that she walked at his side and shared her food.

But he’d taken it all in stride, hadn’t he? He was self-assured, casual. It was that, paired with his power, his magic, that had cast a glamour over her.

What was in it for him, Lacey wondered. For the first time, she shifted her perspective to consider that it wasn’t all about her; she wasn’t the goal, the main character. She couldn’t know what Peter thought, what he wanted. The thought, alien and cold, crept in; _he isn’t human_.

Hyde’s face emerged in her mind’s eye, staring her down. How blind she’d been. Lacey felt something like mortification, horribly aware she’d been blinded by visions of herself. Ideas about herself. Peter, looking up to her, grateful to her. Hyde, slow and stupid, maybe jealous of the attention she showed Peter.

It was all crap. Peter was sly and unknowable. All along, Hyde’s brute gaze had been full of warning. He’d kept a distance, but had watched over Lacey. God, he was _smarter_ than her. Hyde saw more clearly than she.

The earrings sent out another little burst of warmth and Lacey felt her heart close, like a fist. She wouldn’t cry, for she couldn’t even piece together what she’d cry about. It was one of Hyde’s lines; _I’ll give you something to cry about._

Rumplestiltskin paced and Killian watched. His antsiness was fully manifest. His heel tapped rapidly on the floor, his jaw flexed with a surprisingly handsome regularity. If the girls weren’t so distracted and filled with portents of doom, they would swoon to the sight of Killian Jones.

He was swoon-worthy. Even seeing him as a sleepy boy-toy in Rumplestiltskin’s bed couldn’t dull his sharp edges. The flash of his eyes, his darkness and the blade-quick showing of white teeth, predatory. His mouth was turned-down, his profile straight-nosed and aristocratic. Crackling energy popped and fizzed all around him.

To Rumplestiltskin, he said, “Could you settle down, mate? You’re about to make me come out of me skin.”

“Won’t that be novel.”

Killian issued a modified, grumbled growl, then he, too, was up and pacing.

David was dressed, still wild eyed. He might have flailed about in all directions, a sudden apparition of frantic octopus, but he was holding Emmaliana. Victor had done well with the formula; she slept soundly, belly content. Her mouth was a tiny rosebud and David stared at it, gloomy. It was Mary Margaret’s mouth, there could be no mistaking it.

“Shouldn’t we be looking?” he asked.

“Hush, boy. I’m thinking.”

“But, shouldn’t… “

“Where?” Rumplestiltskin fixed him with a morose stare, down a long and hooked nose. The secrets in his hooded eyes were uncountable. David, open faced and without a secret more complex than teenage sex, stared back. He felt under-gunned.

“I don’t know.” David said. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Sitting around doesn’t seem all that productive.”

“Neither is running around, willy-nilly.” Rumplestiltskin said, hands dancing. “You don’t understand, do you?”

“Understand what?”

“He’s taken her. _Spirited_ her. She won’t be found in _this_ world.”

David heard _spirited_ and _this world_ and went pale. His lips were white. Did Rumplestiltskin mean Peter had killed Mary Margaret?

Killian saw and understood. He took pity. He said, “He doesn’t mean she’s dead, lad. He means she’s with the Others.”

Color slowly came back to David’s face, but his eyes, light and sharp, went flat. Disbelief bloomed and Killian wondered how the devil the boy could still foster such denial.

He didn’t add that being in Faerie might be the same thing as being dead.

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little warning, as I don't think the tags quite do it: This chapter is more explicit than the others, and also features dub-con or magical coercion.

Mary Margaret was like a mule. An unyielding, little burro. Peter had never encountered such stubbornness, even in Hyde. And Hyde could be a fucking wall.

“Come _on_.” He yanked hard on her arm.

Her upper body lurched forward, but her heels dug in. She looked like a pixie, but she was strong. Sturdy. He looked at the swell of her breasts, nostrils flared. She would start to leak, soon. She would need relief, like it or not.

She said, “You scrawny, butt-faced, retarded little weasel! Take me back home. Get me back to my baby before I break every bone in your toothpick body, you deluded, feral twink.”

Oh, blah-blah-blah. These people. So certain in their belief that everything they needed to know was visible from the outside. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…

Surprise! It ain’t a goddamned duck. Even Hyde had been able to see that much. The Jack-in-the-Box popped open and out sprang Evil Santa Clause, flinging malevolent spells from his hump-back sack. These dullards should all have their heads examined.

Peter said, “Pause, Rethink. _Try_. Consider that, if by some sheer, freaking miracle you manage to get rid of me, you’re still _here_. They’ll sniff you out like a rotten fish. It’s not like you can find your way out.”

It was like logic held no place in this girl’s decision making. Hope belief, faith; ugh. Faith in what? There was no sense of reason. She continued to fight, tooth and nail. It was beginning to piss him off.

Eyes wide, jaw tensed, he raised a hand that was hot with magic. “Do you want me to put the mojo on you? Because I will. Come at me one more time.”

It seemed she could not resist a dare. She tried to twist her way out of his grip. She flailed, wild. She regrouped and hurled herself at him, claws first.

 He remembered when Hyde taught him to fight. He’d said _close yourself off from fear_. Even if you’re going to die, you’d go down fighting. Then you’d have a chance, and – if not – you’d do some damage on your way out. Hyde said, “They ain’t gonna find me, stank in no ditch.”

Peter wondered if Hyde had taught Mary Margaret. Fuck it. His hot hand suddenly blazed with light. Mary Margaret flinched. Huffing as she fought, she said, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you _dare_.” Her wild eyes moved from his hand to his face. She had no idea. None.

Please. Too late, pixie. Shoulda-coulda-woulda. He dared. Oh, he dared, alright. Mimicking various adults he’d heard over the years, he said, “You brought this on yourself, little girl.” And she fucking had.

His hand of a regular temperature grabbed Mary Margaret by the hair. He yanked her head back and took some pleasure in hearing her teeth clack together. With his hot hand, he pressed hard to her chest. She struggled recklessly, ger grunts and growls amping up to screams. Weirdly, the riotous fight made Peter feel calm. Some of his irritation died away and he looked at the spirited little thing he held. He looked, almost fondly. She was caught between his two hands and her eyes rolled back, thanks to the magic hand. They showed their whites as magic poured into the cavity of her body. Then, his hand went _inside._ He’d never done it before and had had only the faintest inkling that it was something to _be_ done. Holy shit.

He got hard, fondling her heart. Her scream was silenced; she was quite breathless.

As if speaking to a frightened animal, he said, “Easy. Easy.” He said it softly, the sibilant hiss of it felt good upon his tongue.

The fight went out of her so abruptly, he had to hoist her up. For such a little thing, she had some heft. While she was still a little out of it, he cupped one of her breasts. Fuck, it was heavy. Heavy and hot. She moaned… it probably hurt. He desperately wanted to tear off her blouse, to peel away her nursing bra and give suck. He moaned as she moaned, a wave of heat and desire rolling over him. He hungered.

Voice hoarse, he asked, “Are you going to be a sweet girl, now?”

When she spoke, she indeed sounded like a sweet girl. Her voice was very little-girlish, lost and far away. She lacked focus. She looked at him, then all around. She was bewildered by all she beheld.

“Yes.” Said her small voice. “I’m a sweet girl.”

“I know you are.” Peter murmured. He gave her breast a light squeeze that made her jump. There it was, the leak. Fucking hell. Sugary liquid made a bloom on her blouse.

It wasn’t for him. He’d brought her here with a purpose, as a gift. She would be a wet nurse; so strong, she couldn’t help but give strength to the withered babies of this land. Babies, perhaps such as he’d been. She was a gift for a lord, not meant for him. No matter how his mouth watered and his belly squeezed painfully to his spine, his hollowed body made of angst. _Mommy_ , he thought.

 

 

 

 

Mary Margaret gazed in wonder. She felt frightened, but it was far away. It was like a memory of being frightened, or like she’d forgotten something very important, which might also be frightening. Everything around her was so beautiful. It pulled her away from those things she tried to recall.

Once, the school had made a trip to a botanical garden in the built-up City of Epiphany, so different from Downtown. They’d started out in early morning, still dark. As the school bus crested a steep hill, there was the city, sprawled out below. The rising sun lapped over it like liquid gold.

So many buildings, tall skyscrapers, all in a cluster. Some were completely sleek and some were embellished, Gothic peaks and spires. Everything was glass and steel, and the liquid roil of the sun painted all of it, so that it seemed to burn. The city shone. It hurt to look at it. Angels, wings afire, might rise from the valley of the City. But how could there be gardens?

There were, all tucked away. Up close, the spaces between buildings were far wider than when viewed from afar. There were parks, old shade trees completely dwarfed by man-made things. Trees lined the sidewalks of city streets. If not distracted by building and a shocking, endless flow of people, one might see that green was everywhere.

The Botanical Gardens were inside a tall, brick wall, covered in English ivy; the Gardens had been enchanting. Cottage gardens, Japanese gardens, English knot gardens, medicinal herb gardens; forested, natural land with rough trails… Mary Margaret had begun to plan her wedding while taking the class tour. It would be in the Spring, when delicate blossoms of fruit trees and dogwoods were everywhere, a sweep of white and pale pink. The dusty lavender of wisteria. Her bouquet would be those same flowers, so full of promise. The wedding would take place outside, both magical and yet utterly natural. It would be a fairy tale.

Mind fuzzy, as if she hadn’t quite woken from a richly textured dream, Mary Margaret gazed at Faerie. The Botanical Gardens began to seem trite in her memory, like a stage set.

The beauty she looked upon was delicate and vast, and yet it had muscle. It was wild, perhaps it fed on blood. There were no buildings, no glass and steel. There was no wall, muffling the sounds of cars and people. The canopy of trees did not mask a far-off sound of airplanes or the surprisingly close, missile-like sound of jets.

There was only the sky above, an endless ocean of robin’s egg blue, the color deep. She felt as though she could lick it, like frosting. The trees seemed almost as big around as they were tall, buildings in and of themselves. The ground was leafy and soft beneath her feet and the scent was largely a humus scent of decaying leaves and wood, of the sprouting of mushrooms and of enriched soil. (Enriched with blood? With bone?)

The scent of the air was also sharply, bitterly green. In patches it was richly spiced with the scent of flowers she’d never before seen. Some were as tall as her; taller. They stood together in groups, seeking the sun though the trees. They yearned. They put forth a narcotic scent and drew to themselves a variety of pollinators, all of whom became drunk on nectar.

Mary Margaret could see these things happening, as if her eyes had developed a zoom lens. It was disorienting. She took a long view; in the distance was a sparkle of river. Then she saw a bee in close-up, furry detail, the wriggle of its butt as it lost itself in flower sex.

She felt a hand holding hers, pulling her along, and sometimes she could focus on walking. She was tugged. It was odd that Peter held her hand, but - clearly - he knew where they were going.

He looked different, and she finally realized that it was his skin. It was a burnished-golden color, a light tan in a shade of honey. He was no longer the worm-pale-white of everyone at the Shelter. Cadaverous.

She looked at her own skin, her arm, out-stretched to Peter’s hand. It was unchanged, as pale as the flowers that drifted down from the trees and carpeted the ground. Lily-white. (And, did the falling petals make a soft sound of chimes?) But Peter was browned, his hand was very warm. It was as if he’d finished baking. He turned to look at her, and his green eyes, within a honey-colored face, were intense and startling. His prettiness came as a surprise. Freckles splattered over his cheeks, and Mary Margaret found them cute. He was puckish rather than monkey-faced.

Who are you, she wondered? She’d thought she’d known. _That little shit_ , David called him, and her assessment had been the same. A bratty boy, a Mordred, said Rumplestiltskin; a Draco, which cracked her up. A secretive, bratty boy whose bedroom was littered with suspiciously balled-up socks and tissues, some of the tissues artfully stuck to the wall. _Gross_ , she and Emma declared, and made a deliberate effort to stay away. The funk surrounding his bed was squeamishly intimate.

He seemed different, now. In his fully-baked warmth, he put off a scent that was like cookies, fresh from the oven. It competed with the richly scented land. Mary Margaret stared at the browned nape of his neck, bumpy with vertebrae. His hair curled up there, girlish.

Like Killian, the irises of his eyes were circled with a darker color, intensifying the light. On Killian, the dark ring made for wolf eyes, the girls were all agreed. It was different for Peter.

They were demon eyes, or maybe angel’s eyes. Mary Margaret was surprised to imagine likenesses between the two.

They came to a copse of alder trees, very near the rush and quiet babble that was a wide bend in the river. The water was the color of tea. Strange, parrot-colored flowers, somewhat like orchids and somewhat like lilies, grew tall and nodded against large rocks, varied in colors of earth or slate, covered in bright green moss. The scent was mud and cold water, a fresh and water-logged scent of flowers. Pollen and Toll House cookies, with toasted pecans.

Peter stopped walking. He turned to face her and drew her close, and Mary Margaret felt very curious. She didn’t think she was dreaming, yet she felt very dream-like. She felt like she was waiting for Peter to deepen their connection, to hold her or kiss her. She felt a longing for it, as if her were a part of her, long missed. He was a long-lost brother, when she’d thought she’d had no family at all. (In her head, Rumplestiltskin said _at tall_ ). Having been separated all this time, it was easy to feel romantic feelings when reunited, when the truth was revealed. They were strangers, really, so incest was meaningless. But they shared blood, the link between them so much stronger than the one she shared with David.

David…? Something uncertain and yet mournful echoed within Mary Margaret.

Peter was holding something. Something pink-red and glowing, like a big, faceted ruby. Pretty, it fit in the palm of his hand. His thumb caressed over it and she felt a corresponding ache in her chest, between her legs. She was wet, and tried to admonish herself. It was exactly this quick and hot sort of passion that had moved things along way too quickly with David. (Oh, the _hurt_ ). She needed to think.

Peter looked into her eyes, but he was speaking to the thing in his hand. Deep within its interior, something fluttered. It responded to him. Mary Margaret felt the flutter inside herself.

He said, “You’re a sweet girl.”

Pleasure suffused her being. If only David would speak to her like that. Feeling disloyal, she made a quick comparison; David came up lacking. Even during sex, he was quiet. Then he slept, and she was left wide awake, her mind wandering all over. She was outside of herself, watching, worried, wondering over the images in her head.

A feeling, sharp and painful in her chest, told her that Peter would be different. He would talk to her, guide and quiet her busy, racing mind. He would direct her and praise her, and when he did, she would know some sort of relief.

Her pleasure in his words, in his scent and his eyes fueled her blood. She blushed. _Was_ he her brother? Was that the recognition? Where had the idea come from?

He said, “Take off your blouse for me, Mary Margaret. Be a good girl, a sweet girl.”

She nearly moaned, rocking on her feet a little. He was _doing_ things to her, somehow. Yes, he was her brother, maybe her twin. Maybe she had latent magic (!) and he was waking it.

But he was also alien. He was _other_. He had an instinctive knowing of her… it felt like he touched her. His thumb made the soft, circular motion on the ruby and a slow pulse steadily insinuated between her legs.

She was sweet, everyone knew. She was good. She was the favorite of all of her teachers, and other kids liked her, anyway. She took off her blouse and let it fall to the ground. Under Peter’s direction, she removed her bra. She moaned, leaning forward, her arms hugged beneath her breasts. They _hurt_. Why did they hurt so much? She reached for her bra, feeling that she must have its support, she couldn’t manage without it. Peter stilled her hand.

With his free hand, he traced his fingers lightly over one breast. His thumb ghosted over one very darkened nipple and Mary Margaret gasped. She was going to come out of her skin. Her breasts were too much to bear. She felt embarrassed by them, by their engorged size and unreal firmness, their heat and sensitivity. They were veiny and shocking. They were a spectacle, nothing like the small and innocent rounding she’d always known. When, why had this happened to her?

The sensitivity was overwhelming. She felt so very aware of her nakedness. There was shame in it, and the shame, along with the pain made her begin to cry. She was forgetting something and it was going to drive her mad. When David was a shade in her mind, the feeling of shame grew.

Peter said, “Fuck it.”

His hand supported her breast and he bent forward, his mouth wide open. It was hot softness around her nipple and areola, then wetness, a firm suck. For a moment, a sharp spike of pain was like a rush of bright light through her center. The pain faded along with the glare of light, and what she felt was pleasure, relief. She groaned, long and unladylike. The rush between her legs was feverish and needy and the feeling that she burst, she emptied into Peter’s mouth made her feel immodest and gluttonous.

It was different from anything she’d known before. Nothing was filtered through a sense of identity. Mary Margaret was gone. She was only a thing that needed, something that breathed and bled sex. She was one of the flowers, crying out to bees and luring them with colorful genitalia. She only wanted warmth and pleasure… she could be naked in the sun, legs open and accepting of whatever charitable stimulation came to her.

Peter switched breasts and the rush, the burst happened again. Then a blissful sort of dreaming began. He brought her to the ground and lay over her. His thigh pressed, hard, between her legs. She felt herself grinding against it, felt the hard ridge of his cock as he dry-humped against her. Her panties were soaked. It didn’t matter. She was a thing, no one. She could take off her jeans and go naked, this day forward. Those of this world could use and judge her as they saw fit.

From breast to breast Peter went, mouth sucking and pulling from her, tongue lapping. Mary Margaret couldn’t begin to reciprocate. Her hands dug into the earth, her hips rocked and she wept, but didn’t know why. Her eyes remained closed throughout the weeping. In darkness, dappled light playing against her eyelids, she _felt_. Each soft lave of Peter’s tongue was a color in her mind, a brushstroke. It was the beat of a butterfly wing and drew from her a pleasure so wistful, so full of longing, fresh tears formed and flooded from beneath her eyelids.

She felt him sit up and begin to undo her jeans. _Yes_. Yes, please. She lifted her hips, helping him to pull them off. Without hesitation she opened her legs. The air was cool on her hot and tender flesh, but then Peter moved low. His breath was so hot, she felt she might melt.

He smiled and murmured, “Oh, you’re such a good girl, Mary Margaret. Our Most Beloved. You’re my good girl.”

Her voice was a keening whine. _His_ voice, his words worked inside her. In answer she rocked her hips. Seeking the heat of his mouth, she pressed herself to his lips. Obligingly, he kissed. It was a soft kiss, the butterfly wing she’d felt, teasing her overheated skin.

She felt his head turn, the tickle of his curls to one thigh, his teeth bit against the other. It felt good, the liquid light moved and pulsed along her center. He pressed another little kiss to her core, a feather of breath against the bundle of nerves at the apex of her sex. No one had done such a thing to her, before… she had only the most vague idea of the act as a real thing. She wanted it, she wanted more.

A flower to a bee, her voice hoarse and greedy, she said, “Lick it… please.”

“Mmm.” Peter said. His voice was far more controlled than hers.

Mary Margaret felt that he’d somehow become sated at her breasts, and now he played. He teased. “Do you want me to?” he murmured, his lips moving against her neediest parts.

She made the keening sound again, rocking her hips. Each rock briefly brushed her sex to his lips and it felt so good. The quick kiss against the alarm of her flesh, her display and demand… it all felt so good. The racing of her mind did not exist. It was long forgotten, with so many other things.

Peter laughed in a soft way, then he licked. Mary Margaret almost screamed. The scream was swallowed as her breath arrested, held. Her hips froze, thighs tensed, and she held still as Peter’s tongue fluttered over her, a serpent’s tongue.

It moved inside her, velour-soft and yet muscled, insistent. It laved, broad and wet, from her perineum to her apex, then was a quick lapping, a licking and sucking at the demanding little bud. It played her without mercy until she felt as if she went all to pieces.

It tore through her, a revelation. _This_ was what it was. This was the thing people talked about. When David, soft and sleepy after sex, asked, _Did you come?_ This was what he meant.

Mary Margaret always told him _yes_ , for it seemed to matter to him. Before now, she hadn’t had any idea of what he meant. Sex could feel good, then… really good. It climbed, and she wished she could continue to feel it, the climb, without end. Maybe _that_ was coming.

For moments she made no sound, though her mouth was wide open. Her heels and hands dug into the ground, her body a drawn bow. Peter’s suckle became more firm, relentless. He slid two fingers inside her and made a fast thrust.

Light exploded everywhere and the sound that came from Mary Margaret’s throat was guttural and harsh. _Coming_ was a visceral, gut-wrenching experience. She pressed hard to Peter’s mouth, his fingers. Once again, her hips rocked, riding out the excruciating pleasure that wracked her body and warped her mind. From now on, she thought, this was all she wanted. Mary Margaret was dead. What remained was nakedness; mouth, breasts and cunt. Want. This was the truth; shame was useless.

Euphoria died back, faded. Something nagged at her. Peter had sucked at her breasts, relieving her of a terrible burden. But… it wasn’t for him to do. The burden she carried wasn’t for him.

What was she forgetting?

 


	18. Chapter 18

Jefferson was becoming more accustomed to holding Emmaliana, but it was still weird. He’d given her a bottle. As instructed by a smarty-pants Ruby, he’d put a burping cloth on his lap and laid her on her belly. He’d patted her warm little back.

‘Burping’ was putting it mildly. The sound that came out of the small, pod body was that of a drunken sailor. Sometimes it was accompanied by what the others genteelly called ‘spit-up’. Spit-up, his left nut. The little monster puked on him.

“Hence, the cloth.” Emma pointed out.

Like she was so wise. She barely held the baby and, when she did, she seemed as awkward and ill at ease as he.

Emmaliana wanted something; but, what? Her belly was both full and burped. Jefferson had held her bottom up to the level of his nose and given a suspicious sniff. The very _notion_. All seemed to be okay; the sniff revealed only a scent of baby powder and unsullied diaper.

But she wiggled and fussed. She didn’t cry, though she was capable of screams that, as Rumplestiltskin said, could wake the dead. As far as Jefferson knew, she hadn’t done that either.

She was clearly annoyed. Something wasn’t going her way, and her expression was one of having tasted something sour. Her surprisingly strong body lurched on his lap so that he had to struggle to keep her from catapulting to the floor.

“ _What_?” he demanded of her.

She looked at him in derision. She _did_.

Fighting the resistance of her determined wriggle, he cradled her in one arm. With his other hand, he held Simon before her. He pretended it was Simon, a most reasonable rabbit, who spoke.

“What do you want, small human? What could possibly be wrong in your world? _You_ don’t have to learn trigonometry. Or deal with Hyde.”

It appeared. David. It was like he was turning into Quasimodo. Periodically he melted from the shadows, emerged from the bell tower. He lurched around, wild-headed and with eyes that were red and completely unreadable. He was more unnerving than Hyde.

Thick and morose, he grumbled, “She wants her mother.”

Jefferson sighed. Well, duh. But her mother wasn’t around, just now. With a small gleam of hope, he suggested, “Maybe she wants her father?”

David approached. He was a touch ripe. He stared at his baby with hollow eyes and, for a moment, he let her hold onto his finger. Look, Jefferson wanted to say, she does want you. She quieted, staring up at David as if the mothership had landed. Or fathership, whatever.

But, wordless, David moved on. Back to shadow, back to the bell tower, where he could swing from ropes and beat his chest. Emmaliana began to squirm again.

Victor approached and sat down next to Jefferson. He reached for the baby. Relieved, Jefferson handed her over and then watched, his shoulder leaned to Victor’s, as Victor made odd faces at Emmaliana. She was taking the bait, but in a half-hearted manner. Victor was strange enough to give her pause.

“Where’s David?” Victor asked.

“I don’t know. Lurking. He’s off being lonely and shit.”

Victor gave a sidelong look and Jefferson felt mildly ashamed. Things weren’t good. Well, they were dire. But he couldn’t operate in gloom, 24-7. He went on to say, “Em wants something, but I don’t know what.”

“Her mother.” Victor said. Jefferson could smack him.

So, what if she did? Hell, didn’t they all? They had to come up with another solution.

Standing, Victor walked back and forth, bouncing Emmaliana on his shoulder. Cautious with hard-learned knowledge of her various eruptions, Jefferson also stood. He draped the burping cloth over Victor’s shoulder. He _knew_ the baby looked at him as though he were appallingly simple.

Jefferson sat again, watching. They were in an almost bare foyer, near the front door. There was a coat rack and a stark wooden bench, upon which Jefferson sat. Tall, narrow windows on either side of the door were made of squares and rectangles of stained glass, and their colors glowed on the wooden floor. They painted Emmaliana and Victor in passing.

Jefferson began to see a pattern. When Victor walked toward the door, Emmaliana calmed. The colored light bathed her, bathed Victor. When he made his return trip, walking towards the stairwell, she fussed. She squirmed. She seemed to lean, almost to reach for the stairwell, in particular to a cupboard beneath the stair. It was a small door set in wood paneling. It was the sort of place Jefferson was happy to ignore, though it wasn’t truly sinister. It housed a vacuum, a broom and a dust handle.

The front door opened and Hyde, in wolfish glory, walked in. Yay. Jefferson tried to make Simon less obvious, holding the rabbit at his hip. Hyde took the scene in, then merely shook his head. Passing through the foyer, he growled, “You’re so fucking gay for each other.”

Neither responded. Emmaliana offered no commentary. It was actually pretty mild for Hyde; Jefferson relaxed. He saw, a peculiar feeling in his limbs, that Victor blushed.

Finally, the pattern got to him. He couldn’t keep it to himself. “She wants to look under the stairs.” He said.

Victor cocked his head, giving Jefferson his birdy sort of look. “She told you this?”

“She keeps looking at the door and reaching for it. It’s what she wants, why she’s fussy.”

Rising, Jefferson went to the little door. He hated such things. The attic, the crawlspace; no way was he going into those places. Sometimes Rumplestiltskin emerged from the attic, (where he communed with a dead and/or mad wife?), and a spider dangled leggily from his feathery hair, rappelling for a shoulder.

Jefferson wasn’t even as comfortable as one might hope with closets. He tried to ignore the space beneath his bed, but occasionally he had to shine a flashlight down there, just in case.

There was the creepy element; spiders and mice, possible monsters or their droppings. But there was also an element that was much harder to pin down. Maybe he’d open a door three times; The first two times he would see only coats or cleaning products, whatever a closet or cupboard housed. On the third try… he might be met with a howling wind that tried to suck him into its swirling vortex, and then into something altogether Other. Somewhere he didn’t want to go, and a place to which he felt he might have an unwanted connection.

Doors, closets, dark spaces. So untrustworthy; one never knew.

Still, Emmaliana had made her wishes known. Jefferson also felt a weird prodding from Simon, as if Simon hummed in his hand and almost, not quite, spoke in his head. A wordless push. Jefferson bent low and opened the cupboard door.

Just as quickly, he closed it and backed away. Emmaliana clapped her hands and laughed.

Clutching Simon to his chest, Jefferson was dismayed to realize that, sometimes, the thing one feared the most happened on the first try. His fear was excited to greet him. It met him more than halfway.

His big eyes like saucers, he looked at Victor. “Get Rumplestiltskin.” He said.

 

 

 

 

 

There were a few things that put a calm into Rumplestiltskin, a calm that was also a quiet restlessness. Fire. Water. He could stare at the movement of flames, listening to the muted roar they made, whispering eagerly among the embers. He was lulled by the scent of woodsmoke, the pulse of warmth.

He could watch the sea, its motion like breath, its rhythm a heartbeat. It seemed to pull him in and nudge him out, a tug on his blood. It roared and crashed, yet was steady, a metronome.

The elements, simple though they were, could induce trance. Calm moved into his body and mind, and – for a time – he was relieved of racing, turbulent thoughts. Children, magic. Killian. Countless wrongs done to him and even more wrongs he’d done. Worry over power he held dear.

These things slipped away, small. Within the calm a different Rumplestiltskin walked the dark halls of the Shelter. Restless, but not harried. No Furies howled at his ear, no Erinyes snapped at his heels.

This Rumplestiltskin walked the shadows, peered into doorways and out of windows. He opened boxes, closets and drawers.  He knew he searched for something, but did not fret.

He felt curious. He explored, all the while comforted by the scent of smoke or the enduring, salt-air smell of the ocean. He paced with a sort of pleasure, holding one object and then another, copping feels at random.

He came to the foot of the stairwell, surprised to find Emmaliana there. She lay on her back, quite alone. Her plump limbs moved as if she was underwater. She was content.

Stooping, he picked her up. One ought not leave babies laying out to spoil. He held her to his chest, her head to his shoulder. Her nape smelled of burnt sugar.

In his darkened, somewhat fish-eye view, the Shelter as a ghost world, he turned to look at the stairwell. His action turned Emmaliana away from it and she began a soft, kitten-like fuss.

Ah. The door. The cupboard. The only things within were cleaning implements, the vacuum with its Nozzle of Evil which the Shelter babies despised. He’d looked within a number of times.

Now he saw there was a change. The frame of the door gave off a very subtle glow, easily missed, even in the dark. He knelt to touch it. His fingertips hummed, as did the baby. She was happy again.

“You found it.” he murmured. Impossible to say if her draw was to the Fae or to her mother; at so young an age, both would exact a psychic pull on her. Good girl.

 

 

Outside, at the cliffs, Rumplestiltskin’s eyes opened. He leaned heavily on his cane. Below, the sea pounded and raged, a steadfast tempest. Turning back to the Shelter, he saw Killian.

From a distance Killian watched Rumplestiltskin. He held Emmaliana, Jefferson and Victor standing just behind.


	19. Chapter 19

Everyone gathered in the foyer and stared at Rumplestiltskin, who stared at the door beneath the stairwell. The glow of its frame, which had been only a ghost of light, now pulsed and was a clear, obvious beacon. It was a warm, steady glow, more golden than white, and it invited touch. No one touched either frame or door.

“I’m going to fetch Mary Margaret.” Rumplestiltskin said, turning to the group.

“I’m going with you.” was David’s completely unsurprising response. He stepped up, shoulders squared, fists clenched. His face, almost incapable of meanness, was hard.

With a sigh, Rumplestiltskin agreed, “Indeed, you are.”

“And me.” Said Killian’s husky voice. He still held Emmaliana and she looked at his earring, his dark and dashing visage with interest. Oh, the allure. What manner of beast could it be?

Other babies were held by children or slouched in bouncy seats and wind-up swings, all unwound. They hummed, wee machines. Excitement, wariness… their feelings simmered in the air and everyone could hear a faint chiming. Bodies shifted with unease. Whether the chiming came from the babies or the door, none could say. That there was a connection of babies-to-door was clear.

Rumplestiltskin said, “No, you will _not_ go.”

“What… what the devil, mate? You’ll need me. You’ll need someone who has your back.”

“I need you to stay put and look after everyone, here. We may be gone only moments, dearie. Or it may be longer. You’ve got to keep children in school, babies out of trouble and various Authorities content. There must be an adult on site.”

Killian made a soft scoff, an under-the-breath bark. Did he turn his nose up at the notion that he was an adult, Rumplestiltskin wondered?

Jerking his head to David, Killian muttered, “ _That_ one will be frantic about Mary Margaret. He won’t look out for you.”

Nodding, Rumplestiltskin said, “Hyde’s coming along, too.”

Many mouths dropped open. Heads, bodies turned. They all looked at Hyde, a dark menace of demonic doom to the rear of the gathering. He wore his slept-in, grunge-attire and stood moodily, arms folded over his chest, pelvis jutted out as if by habit. He looked uncomfortable under the scrutiny, his black eyes glassy and hard.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” David said, shaking his head. “No fucking way.”

Even the adults were somewhat taken aback by his use of profanity. It was not his way. Babies’ eyes rounded and Emmaliana’s mouth made a querulous little O. Emma felt a hurtful surge in her chest.

Rumplestiltskin had taken on a peculiar, rather jaunty air. His cane leaned against the wall paneling of the stairwell. He had both hands in his trouser pockets and kept a wide-legged stance, one foot tapping. He surveyed his domain and cast a shrewd eye upon David.

“He’s coming, that’s an end to it. We need a wolf to help track Mary Margaret. You’ve no idea how different it is, where we’re headed.”

“Neither does he. And he’s not an actual wolf.” David countered.

“Simmer down, Nolan. I’ll have your back.” Hyde said, his voice all grinding gears and bile.

David looked unconvinced, but said nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

“You can’t go without me.” Killian said quietly, furtively.

He stood in the kitchen with Rumplestiltskin. He’d handed-off Emmaliana to the care of Emma and Ruby. He felt strangely naked before Rumplestiltskin.

“I need you here.” Rumplestiltskin repeated.

“No. I’ll be sick with worry. I have to go with you, to look after things. If you’re hurt or in trouble, how will I know?”

Rumplestiltskin’s brow creased, bones sculpted with tension. Genuine affection; such a thing was difficult to process. Passing dalliance, an amused fondness, a spike of lust… he could manage these things. How had his connection to Killian become so deep? It was like a starfish variety of tumor, wrapped about an indigenous organ and holding tight, sinking in. The potential for hurt was great, surgical excision nearly unthinkable.

He blew out his breath, preparing to cause pain. Bewilderment. He was loath to do it.

“You _can’t_ go,” he said, careful of his words, “because… you’ve been there, before. You could get stuck, there. Trapped.”

Killian’s face was all confused pout. Rumplestiltskin wanted to kiss him; it was this exact sort of hurt-boy prettiness that had seduced him in the first-bloody-place.

“I’ve never been there.” Killian said, his voice low. “And… _you’ve_ been. Isn’t it you who would be trapped, if that’s the case?”

“No. I mean… Killian, it’s where you were fostered. It was your home. I traded for you, to get you back. But.. you’ve grown up, strong and healthy. Perfect, really, but for the hand. They don’t look kindly upon such imperfections, but it would be well out-weighed by your strength, your blood. Your _seed_. Do you not see? They’d never let you go, and they have a previous claim on you. They’d consider you returned.”

The pouting confusion became utter derision. Killian’s eyes, arresting as always, went quickly wild.

“You’re off your nut, mate.”

“I’m not. Think about it. Think on it while I’m away, it will start to come together. To make sense.”

“I’m _not_ one of them.”

“No, but they have a claim on you, dearie.”

“What did you trade for me, then?”

Rumplestiltskin looked down, feeling a weight of shame. His leg began to trouble him. He’d been made crooked with sin.

“I gave them back a portion of magic they’d bestowed upon me. And… your hand. They wanted it, a piece of you, for their magic. Their fertility. They took it in recompense.”

Killian stared down at his hook, the object attached to his body that had always been. Dreamscape was thick upon him.

“No.” he shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I’d remember… _something_. I don’t understand what you’re trying to pull.”

Still looking down, Rumplestiltskin shrugged. “Nothing, at the moment. It’s what I’ve pulled, all these years.”

“Why the devil would you have traded for me? You. Give up magic. “

Rumplestiltskin finally looked up. He raised a hand and cupped Killian’s jaw, pained. He watched heat rise to Killian’s face; he was so easily stirred with touch. He wanted to be touched, to be anchored constantly.

Eyes sad, Rumplestiltskin said, “You begged me, Killian.”

 

 

 

 

It was as simple as the opening of a door and going through, on its surface. Magic, wily and web-like, interconnected, complicated things.

Rumplestiltskin explained that the door only existed because of Emmaliana’s connection to Mary Margaret, and because she was wide open to magic. “As you all were, once.” He said, and no one believed him.

He said it was possible that Hyde’s connection to Peter played a part, but it was Emmaliana who projected into the other world. In a natural way, she did what he had to set up difficult and costly magic to do, and only at specified times.

However, once the door had been transgressed, the spell would break. The door would be no more and would have to be re-worked from the other side.

Lacey, in her new norm, hung back. She wondered about her connection to Peter, its strength. If she went along, would he want to come to her?

She asked, “How did Peter get through?”

“He is Fae.” Rumplestiltskin said. He said it as a simple, matter-of-fact thing, but it sent shivers racing through Lacey. Everyone seemed uncomfortable with the statement.

Ashamed, Lacey knew she wanted Peter back, she wanted the feeling of secret specialness. He was forever changed for her, now. The awkward boy was eclipsed by the cleverness, sometimes wickedness in his eyes. By his power.

“He has innate magic I don’t possess.” Rumplestiltskin appeared entirely disgusted and annoyed to admit. “I suspect he simply grew into the fullness of his power, realized it, and decided to go home. He took Mary Margaret as a gift.”

He glanced at Killian. Neither would speak the obvious before the children; somehow it was unobvious for them. The truth that he’d taken Mary Margaret, a nursing mother, to be a wet nurse for the spindly children of the Fae. She would be worth a great deal.

Hyde and David came to stand behind Rumplestiltskin, Hyde towering over all. Abruptly, Lacey blurted, “Let me come!”

Aghast, Jefferson grabbed onto her arm. “Noooo…” he murmured. He needn’t have worried; Rumplestiltskin only rolled his eyes at her, then turned to the door.

Its glow sent warm waves into the foyer. The scent of honey’d meadow permeated age-stained walls and dusty ceilings. Phantom scents of lemon verbena and wild ginger wrapped around all present. Emmaliana was still and heavy-lidded, almost in trance, held tight by Ruby. The other babies were restless, small bodies shifting. Whispery, leaf-rattle voices made soft coos and murmurs. The babies were like doves, nestled up to the light.

None of it was real to Killian. He’d accepted Rumplestiltskin’s decree that he remain behind. He understood there had to be a guardian in place… but his sense of dream had escalated. In the kitchen, his last words to Rumplestiltskin were, “Rubbish. It’s all rubbish, mate.”

“It isn’t.” Rumplestiltskin replied softly. “How do _you_ think you lost your hand, Killian? Where do you think the hook came from?” He’d left it at that.

Dismay was stuffed down and muffled within Killian. With Rumplestiltskin gone, he would find no relief from the shadowy strangeness of his life. From its unnamed emptiness. He clenched his jaw and leaned heavily to the wall, the glow of the door lighting the blue of his eyes and gleaming along the curve of his hook.

Rumplestiltskin looked at him. It was a look in parting, his eyes deep. Killian swallowed. Rumplestiltskin opened the door.

The light intensified; a low, western sun, growing red and saturated. The honey’d scent intensified, then a cold scent of cypress, dep water. It was narcotic, and those watching became as entranced as Emmaliana.

Rumplestiltskin went through the door, stooping down. He was followed by David and then Hyde, bent nearly double. They glowed, bodies made of red-gold, liquid light, then they were gone.

The light was gone, as was the scent. The room normalized. Everyone’s eyes adjusted and they saw only the broom closet, a vacuum lurking in its deep recesses. The varnished-lemon scent of wood polish was subdued by the scent of dust, soft and ever-accumulating.

Killian tried to speak, to close the door and turn the children to some defined and clear task. Something real. Right; let’s get to supper. All he could do was stare. He could, by no means, close the door.

It was Emma who finally said, “I guess we should go on with regular life?”

Killian turned a wounded expression upon her. She spoke as one does after a death _. We’ll always remember, but life goes on._ Meeting his eyes, she saw that he was stuck.

She said, “I’ll find a door stop, to keep the door open. It doesn’t look like it will matter if a baby crawls in there, or something. I mean, it shouldn’t fall into another dimension. I don’t think.” With a careful brow-raise to Killian, she asked, “Okay?”

He nodded, and she went about prodding the others back into a semblance of reality. Killian was left with a small circle of Shelter babies. With him, they stared into the cupboard under the stairs, fixated on nothing.

 


	20. Chapter 20

David stared, mesmerized. The forest in which he stood was almost tropical, so green were its greens. It was completely out of his frame of reference. Emerald green, iridescent green, a green that was coppery, dull in one light yet shimmering in another. Water without source dripped from enormous leaves.

Tree trunks were big enough around to provide housing; their roots spread and humped over the ground, like octopus skirts of tentacles. Ferns towered over his head and whispered something so primeval, he would not have been surprised if a dinosaur appeared. Or a dragon.

Beneath the canopy of deep forest, it was nearly dark. It could have been dusk, the sun about to drop below the horizon. There was little to no undergrowth; the ferns could not be considered as such.

It was a shock, then, when the forest began to thin, to change. The trees became smaller, more manageable for David to consider as _trees_. Light crept in and it became evident that it was broad daylight.

Even the temperature was different. David eased out of a darkness that was also cold, every hair on is body standing in goose-bumped alertness, his balls drawn up and belly tensed for disembowelment by overgrown boar or pre-diluvian reptile. Crossing over into light was not unlike crossing worlds. He could have melted for the sudden, amber and comforting light, the warmth. He could have wept for clarity of sight.

Yet. It wasn’t exactly clarity. He could see, but his perception felt as though filtered through dream. Periodically, he looked to his sides, reminding himself that his companions were still there. They were solid, real.

Rumplestiltskin, at a steady clip, cane close to his bad leg, keeping its pace. Hyde, hands jammed deep in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders up, hackles standing. He loped on long legs, nostrils flared. His dark eyes, narrowed and very unlike Rumplestiltskin’s, were focused.

David wanted to speak. _Where are we? Where are we going? How big is this place? Where is Mary Margaret?_

Did anyone think to bring a weapon? Gun, knife, baseball bat. Sling-shot?

He wanted to ask these things and more, fear and impatience playing tug-of-war in his chest, but the silence was too much. Too wet and deep and saturated. Things lived within it and would respond in unpleasant ways to the intrusion of his voice.

There was undergrowth in the lighter forest. Vines, mushrooms, thorny bits of scrub. There were fallen trees, long hollowed out and mostly rotted. There were flowers in several of the tree-tops. Pale blossoms rained down, a delicate and dewy shower. The forest floor was soft and spongy, carpeted with flowers.

Uncertain if he imagined it, David heard soft chimes. _It’s the trees_ , he thought, without logic. The wind in the leaves, high above. It was like far-away windchimes.

Hyde stopped. David felt a lurch, like he was harnessed and felt the pull on his yoke. He stopped, as did Rumplestiltskin. They both looked at Hyde, whose nose was lifted. At the Shelter it might have been funny… doggy behavior on a self-proclaimed wolf. _What’s that, boy? Mary Margaret’s down the rabbit hole?_

In this world, David didn’t laugh or even crack a smile. Things were different, alright. He waited, his heart stalled in anxious anticipation of information, data. He’d stopped on a dime; good soldier. Rumplestiltskin’s brow raised, then Hyde’s head jerked to the left. _This way_ , said his eyes. His body followed the direction of his nose; David and Rumplestiltskin followed in his wake and David had thoughts of boys raised by wolves, unfit for human interaction but capable of living on grubs and sipping dew from leaves. Capable of scenting out Mary Margaret, when he could not.

 

 

 

 

 

“What do you think?” Peter asked.

He’d waited a while before presenting Mary Margaret. She was still dreamy, probably horny, he thought with an inward grin. He’d gotten her dressed and he’d encouraged her to drink and drink, crouched at the riverside. With the drinking, her breasts were once again engorged. Such bounty; surely his earlier transgression would be overlooked by the Fae.

They didn’t know him, though they were his people. He’d deduced that he’d been given up in trade long ago, perhaps a bundle of sticks with a fetish of feathers and beads. He’d been transformed into a baby, of sorts.

Now he was back and they smelled that he was one of them, but they didn’t know him. They smelled both humanity and innocence on Mary Margaret, and no one could miss her encumbered breasts, the smell of the sweet milk she’d leaked onto her blouse. They must smell it on his breath. For all that they didn’t recognize him, they fully recognized the enormity of his gift.

They were nothing like the various things he’d read all of his life, although those things had long given him a feeling of untruth in his bones. (Branches, whatever). No one standing before him was in any way glamorous or glimmering, though he was certain he’d found the most prosperous. No one was tiny or winged, sipping from the small cups of lily of the valley.

They were tall, even the women. Peter stood in sharp contrast to them in this. Maybe the other side, the Shelter had stunted him, held him back. Or maybe he was made of somewhat different stuff. Maybe these people were redwoods and he was a little crabapple.

The one who seemed to be the leader came forward. Tall, staring down a long, well-formed nose, as far from Peter’s Puckish face as could be. There was aristocracy in the man’s planed forehead, his broad mouth and sculpted cheekbones. His hands were huge, fingers long and elegant. Many of those gathered seemed to share the traits.

But their dress was poor, it seemed to Peter. Not aristocratic in the least. To a one they wore fur and feather, patched together in pieces. Cloth looked burlap-rough and everyone’s motley was mostly brown, earth toned. Sackcloth and straw. Here and there was a bright note of crimson or a deep shadow of green. A gleam of rich, shining plum. Some wore ribbons of a satiny sky-blue.

The man’s hair was long and fairly unkempt. Braids were woven with small beads and shells. Peter saw that a few beads were carved into skulls. They looked to be carved from teeth.

“I think,” the man said, “you have brought a significant gift.”

It made Peter’s skin shiver. His balls shriveled up, wrinkly prunes. He wanted to think _, damn straight. That’s right, I brought a significant gift_ , but the man’s voice was soft and very different. A breeze seemed layered beneath the tone of his voice. He spoke as one who knew Peter’s language, but seldom spoke it. Even after he spoke, there was a sense of rustling in Peter’s head, movement. A rattle in the dry stalks of a spent field. Scarecrow talk.

He held Mary Margaret’s hand and, for the first time, felt that she was _his_. It was absurd. He’d brought her for a purpose, always planning to turn her over. She was his way in. He didn’t share Hyde’s fascination for her. He had no reverence for Mary Margaret, Our Most Beloved. Not even after… the riverside. She was still a commodity; steps had been taken to keep her breasts in working order.

In fact, he thought a great deal of Lacey, of doing to her the things he’d done to Mary Margaret. He wondered if he’d ever see her again.

And then the man’s voice, the rustle in his head. Peter felt something so cold, so alien. It clustered around and closed in. These people should not feel alien to him.

He held Mary Margaret’s hand tighter, no longer wanting to give her away. He wondered about the magic inside of himself. Was theirs greater?

Thinking of Rumplestiltskin, he said, “I may make a gift of her. I’d like to negotiate a trade, see if we can come to a deal.”

There was a murmuring among the Tall and Strange. Their little clearing of huts and dwellings looked like a small village of mud, stone and straw, yet Peter smelled sweetness, all over. What was it? he didn’t see flowers, only a stretch of flatlands. Was it the trees? The people, themselves? The air was pierced with a spicy-sweetness, geranium and cinnamon, honey. Mary Margaret, still bespelled by the heart he held in his left hand, gazed at the muted haze of sky as if to locate the scent. Her brow creased.

The man chuckled, the rustle in Peter’s head intrusive.

“You’ve had a teacher.” He said. “We know him. Little, like you.” he smiled. It made his eyes glow an icy-blue and was rather upsetting.

Peter shrugged and the man asked, “For what would you trade?”

Fuck. He’d wanted to trade for his place among them, but now he wasn’t sure. He’d imagined a very different homecoming, people who knew him. Family. Perhaps not glittering castles with needle spires and colorful flags, but definitely not mud huts. He’d imagined feeling free to let his magic pour out; never again having to hide his true self.

Mary Margaret in trade for his acceptance, his safety. A gift to a prominent leader in order to raise his own status, so that he was not only accepted, but respected. This had been his thought, but… Who _were_ these people? Still, here he was, wet-nurse in hand. What was to be done?

“I want safety in this world.” He said, Mary Margaret’s hand in a death grip. She didn’t seem to notice. “I want a home.”

The group looked uncertain. Peter felt almost relieved. Well, he could tell them. Sorry we couldn’t come to an arrangement. We’ll just be going, now, me and my busty friend. Maybe he could spend a little more quality time with Mary Margaret before finding a doorway back… _home_? Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. What was home? Could he ever go back?

The man said, “It’s easily done. We can give you both safety and shelter. But… a _home_. Belonging. This is more difficult. You are not one of us.”

Yes, he fucking was.

 “I am. I came from here. You traded me, probably for someone like… “ He didn’t want to say Mary Margaret’s name. Maybe it would give them power over her, or some shit. Who knew? He glanced at her, then back to the strange group.

Yes, they looked like a totally different genetic strain. Next to them, he looked like a wee gremlin and Mary Margaret could be a pretty hobbit. But surely he must share their blood.

A woman stepped forward, strawberry blonde and somehow distinctly witchy. The word seemed to stitch itself in the air, around her. _WITCH_.

“I made you.” she said.

Peter’s green eyes rounded. He felt himself flush, skin hot. He was sucker punched. Gasping, he wheezed, “You’re… my mother?” But they’d said they didn’t know him. Blood roared in his ears, a pins and needles shock in his limbs. There was a carbonated sort of fizzing in his chest, painful. A soft explosion of dust in his head.

She was weird, but starkly beautiful. She looked like she was carved from marble or wax. Her bracelets were small stones and bones, clacking together, strung on ribbon.

A murmur-rustle spread through the group like a quick rush of fire. Many smiled. It was funny.

Peter’s flush deepened and the woman said, “No. I’m not your mother. Or, I suppose I’m as much a mother as you’ll ever know. I _made_ you. Out of magic and materials. You shouldn’t be. We don’t know you because you were a thing made and forgotten, a decoy. A payment of magic, given to your teacher. You don’t belong because you never were.”

Peter felt… nothing. For moments he stood, rooted. Was he growing roots? He couldn’t feel, but a ticking slowly revved up inside him. _Tick-tick-tick_ , well of course. He’d known… not _this_. But, something. Something that made him always hang back, look and observe. He’d studied others in his life and modeled his behavior to match. Once he met Hyde, he’d quickly recognized a protector. But, did he feel? Truly?

It was Lacey who had changed things. The way she looked at him, as if surprised by what she saw. She put a restlessness into him so that he needed to know himself. He needed to be free, out in the open. He was tired of acting, of being an actor, all the Goddamned time. Oh, to blaspheme. How good it always felt.

But he knew, didn’t he. He knew he was soulless. _Tick-tick-Boom_.

Abruptly, he _could_ feel. Soulless or no, he was living. He was as alive as all the land around, and that these people would not claim him… hurt. He was a sacrifice, long ago given away and not much mourned. If at all. A sacrifice of magic for a stronger bloodline. These people _did_ look strong; they should be grateful.

How much of what was his own, true magic was siphoned off to Rumplestiltskin? How did the trade work?

Peter couldn’t think. He could feel and now it eclipsed thought. Everything he’d wanted seemed to have died with the woman’s claim.

With no real plan, he turned to Mary Margaret. None too gentle, he slammed her heart into her chest, holding tightly to her arm as she doubled over, inhaling hugely, as if she hadn’t breathed in years. She came back upright, eyes like a mad banshee and face pained. Before she was anything at all like recovered, Peter moved close to her ear.

He said, “Run.”


	21. Chapter 21

Emmaliana was inconsolable and it was making everyone in the Shelter feel varying degrees of insane. The Shelter babies stared at one another and wondered if they’d been born under some rogue and malign star.

Killian trotted about in a frantic way, rocking and bouncing the screaming baby. He seemed to be making it worse. He had the unworthy thought of simply tossing her, her wails growing faint as she sailed out the window, too lost in her own ire to notice her airborne arc.

He resisted. He sang snippets of songs, sort of _. Hush little baby, please shut up. I’ll make Rumple turn you into a duck_. He tried _ro-mah-ro-mah-mah, Gaga-ooh-la-la_. For a time, he had a bit of success with The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, stalling out Emmaliana’s howls with intriguing words, like ‘Gitche Gumee’. He couldn’t remember all of the words, however. His attempt dwindled down to the proper melody and a halfhearted delivery of _and then they all died, filled up with water inside_ …

She caught onto him and her face reddened as she puffed up to release another siren-like fit. Jefferson shook his head, holding tightly to Simon.

“That was _terrible_.” He said.

“ _You_ take her, mate.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Aye. Take her. Give me the bunny.”

Jefferson backed away. No way would he trade Simon for this shrieking baby, or even a more appealing barter. Killian was a few peas short of a pod. The grown-ups had all gone slap-crazy or were schlepping around in Faerie-land. This place was going straight to Hell, an unquiet thought when Jefferson had grown comfortable with being only Hell-adjacent.

 

 

 

“Take this infant!” Killian growled at Emma.

He’d had it. Things had to change. So what if she fancied herself a boy, or at least a non-girl. The boys were pitching in, and it was time the biological girls in this befucked place stepped-up. Killian became a resolute gender-conformist, doing so in self-defense. This baby wanted boobs, he was certain. Gazongas, ta-tas, knockers, jugs. Even if she couldn’t make a meal of them, she still wanted to squish herself against them. She wanted to smell a female smell and line up her heartbeat to that of a warm, caring woman. Where the devil were the warm and caring women?

How did he know this, Killian wondered? He had no real experience of warm, caring women and only a passing acquaintance with boobs of any variety. Though, yes. They were capable of beguiling him at hand and mouth.

Insecure, neurotic women. Cold, self-insulated, not-to-be-disturbed women. These were the women he could readily call to mind. Or simply an absence of women; the vague feeling that, somewhere, a woman dismissed him, outright. Pretty, but useless. It figured that Emma, so clear to him, rejected her own womanhood.

Still, he knew the baby-to-boob equation was true. Maybe the Shelter babies had fed him the necessary information in their dream-whispers. He glared at Emma, knowing his lack of indulgence hurt her feelings; pushing her into a woman’s role. He couldn’t help it. He held Emmaliana out at arm’s length, his face unyielding stone.

“What am _I_ supposed to do with her?” Emma asked. This child so wrongly named for her.

“Play house. Pretend you’re the mommy.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Emma, I swear to bloody _Lucifer_. Take this baby or she and I will enter into a suicide pact. We may make it a cult endeavor and take you lot out with us, since, as you can well see, this is a bleak and uncaring world.”

“ _God_ , okay. Alright, geez.”

Once the child was out of his arms, Killian almost danced. He could float to the ceiling, weightless. He had a massive urge to go get drunk, engage in a touch of reality denial. He couldn’t, though. He was relieved of Emmaliana, but children ran amok. He had to get them in line. Everyone needed to shepherd a baby whilst doing his or her homework. There should be a schedule for meals and such, who was cooking and who was washing up. Perhaps a chart posted to the wall.

How quickly it all began to seem out of control and chaotic. He’d changed the diaper of a boy baby, only to be peed upon the second its wee willie was exposed to air. Chubby legs kicked-up, a bubble of too-quiet laughter issued and then – whoopsie. A devil’s christening.

“Oh, mate. Why?”

_Because-because-because-because-BECAUSE_ , sang beastly, feather-duster voices in his head.

The helter-skelter-Shelter babies loved to listen to Rumplestiltskin tell a story of Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse. It embarrassed Killian that he loved to listen to it as well, especially if he was a bit tipsy. He never tired of the name ‘Titty’, as spoken by Rumplestiltskin.

Rumplestiltskin’s quiet, raspy-as-a-cat’s-tongue voice, hinting at a growl. Killian always warmed to it, seeing images of crows talking, in a secret, furtive language. Foxes, nestled down in a burrow.

But the story was one of chaos that grew and grew. The babies’ eyes would grow wider and wider with each verse. Killian’s breathing would slow, his vision sleepy, but full of movement. His chest rumbled with Rumplestiltskin’s voice.

It was a child’s story that yet began with an unexpected death by scalding with boiling water. Titty, the victim, fell down, dead. Tatty wept. The three-legged stool said, “Tatty, Tatty! Why do you weep?”

“Titty’s dead, so I weep.”

“Then I will hop!”

And so it began, and on it went. It built, and now Killian thought it was like the building-up of a spell. He’d seen his lover at it. He’d wondered, curious and staring from the strange and muffled place that was his dreamworld. Building, one layer upon another, making something out of nothing… Rumplestiltskin creating things from himself, alone.

“Broom, Broom! Why do you sweep?”

“Titty’s dead and Tatty weeps, the stool hops, so I sweep!”

“Then I’ll jar!” (Said the door).

Soon enough it was a house in complete disorder. Mayhem, anarchy; oh- how Rumplestiltskin loved such things. He pretended his favorite of all things was quiet order, but it was a lie.

Objects going wild, moving about on their own and making a big noise of grief. A lamentation and a ruckus heard from miles away.

By the story’s end, it was revealed that Titty lived. (Huzzah!)

Titty mouse came to, and Titty and Tatty took one look at their house, forever lost to forces of magic and emotion, and they ran off together. They fled, to begin another life in another home.

The babies breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the story. In their cribs, they’d grown more and more tense as Rumplestiltskin spun and spun. Then, _whoosh!_ They were given release. They were relieved of the terrible burden of a haunted house and one dead mouse. The mice fled, having never seen such commotion and liking it not one bit. Silence descended. Babies went adrift.

A similar feeling happened inside Killian. He went off to bed, whether on his own or with Rumplestiltskin, feeling that a great and cumbersome energy had been lifted from him. It was no more, not even real; he could close his eyes and sleep.

It was different, now. The story intruded upon his thoughts, possibly another suggestion from the babies. He was _in_ the grieving house… and there was no escape.

More, he couldn’t stop thinking about the abandoned house, itself. What happened to it? No longer did he feel his path lay with the fleeing mice. He couldn’t run away, start anew, breathe different air. He was something invisible, watching. The stool hopped, the broom swept, the door jarred. Drawers opened and closed themselves, beds galloped around bedrooms, trees in the yard dropped all their leaves… it was a house possessed.

He could almost see it; a cottage perched on the edge of the cliffs, not far from the Shelter. It was like a moving carousel, full of animation, yet empty. It told its story to itself until, in its frenzy, it went right over the edge of the cliffs. The story continued on and on, in the sea. It created whirlpools, sucking in energy. The whirlpools spat out worry.

Watching Emma try to get comfortable with Emmaliana, Killian’s hand rose to his chest and massaged over his heart. He was ungrounded, sailing over the edge. Rumplestiltskin needed to get home, soon.

 


	22. Chapter 22

“I want to go home.” Mary Margaret said.

“I know.”

“I hate you. I hate you so much. I’ve never hated, before. It feels like I’m dying. I hope _you_ die. I hope something here eats you, staring with your feet. No, your balls. Then your feet.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You’re insane, you know. A psycho. A… rapist. A pervert. If you don’t get me home to my daughter – “

“Look, would you shut-up? I’m trying to think.”

Mary Margaret shut-up, but her insides boiled. She felt bruised, everywhere. She’d had to wrap her arms around her breasts as they’d run, the jostle was so painful. Her heart in his hands, Peter had had her drink before taking her to the Fae. Now she was full-to-bursting, and still no Emmaliana. A weak part of herself wanted him to suckle her again, just for the relief. It horrified her.

How disturbing her body had become. At home, with David and her baby, it made sense. There was comfort in it. With David spooned to her back, it had felt so natural to cuddle Emmaliana close when she fussed in the night. Latch her onto a bosom and doze through the feeding.

It felt right and warm, reassuring, as if she’d – at last – found her place in the world. It all fit.

But, this. She was like a cow that had lost its calf, issuing a lowing of pain and loss, udder full and hot. That was her; a cow. Cattle. Peter had wanted to trade her as such; that was her worth.

And just as a cow could be given relief by hands or machine, expressing milk, so she was having untoward thoughts of Peter’s earlier actions.

_Just… do it again_. She was on the verge of making the demand. Not _all_ of it. She couldn’t begin to process what had happened, her own throaty pleasure at both breast and…. No. Not now. It was way too much. But, the feeding. She looked at Peter, little jackass; there were no words vile enough. She hated him. She needed him.

“I hate you.” she murmured, soft.

“Mm hm.”

“Why did you do this? Why did you bring me here?”

Peter met her eyes and Mary Margaret flinched. It was hard to look into them, now. After – before. She could look at the whole of him and see the developmentally delayed adolescent she’d known at the Shelter. Braggadocious and hiding under Hyde’s wing. Scrawny neck, long arms, swimming in his clothes.

The details, where lived the devil, were more difficult. His demon eyes; how she’d stared into them, distantly scared, yet fascinated, intrigued. He smelled of her at fingers and mouth and it made her hate himself as much as she hated him. His mouth… most difficult of all. She wanted it, needed it at her breasts.

 His voice saying _good girl_ needled at her. It was a failing, this never-ending desire to be good. He’d taken her drive to please and had twisted it beyond all recognition. She no longer knew herself. She hated him.

“You wouldn’t understand.” He said. He looked away again.

A flock of birds that neither had realized was present suddenly lifted from the tree-tops. It was abrupt and noisy. Water shook down from the trees. Mary Margaret’s heart seized for a moment, shocked.

At least it was in her chest.

She was leaking. It was a nightmare. She closed her eyes.

“Peter… I need you to. Help me. Get it out of me.”

She opened her eyes and could not miss the lust in his. Disgusted, she felt her own lust take a little surge. Her body’s memory of what had happened to it. Pity her mind felt it so differently.

She began to unbutton her blouse, relieved and yet squeamish as Peter moved close.

“Just feed.” She said. “Nothing else. I still hate you.”

He nodded, meeting her eyes. Then his hand supported both breasts and his mouth found her in a way that made her want to sob with relief. She closed her eyes again.

She pretended she was home. She pretended Peter was her wretched, evil, demon baby. He, nevertheless, was hers and was hungry. He must be fed.


	23. Chapter 23

“What the hell… _is_ it?” Jefferson asked.

He and Victor were in the unused room with the big, block of a television. It was like furniture. It got no reception whatsoever; it was from a pre-digital age and was equipped with a frightful tube and some form of antennae. It got hot when powered-up. A palpable forcefield of static could be felt before its screen, a machine with an aura.

Victor had figured out the workings of a VHS player and they were going through a series of tapes. Some of what they’d viewed had been amazing to Victor… early MTV days with recordings of a show called 120 Minutes; even the commercials held him rapt. Musicians that Victor recognized and Jefferson did not, all rather odd and adamantly declaring _I want my MTV_.

There were old movies, some very obscure and many truly disturbing. An incest-bestiality thing under the guise of sci fi/fantasy that Victor was certain had warped his brain. If only he could have a functional MRI, before, during and after.

But… this? People in overalls, sitting around on bales of hay? Cartoon, buck-tooth donkeys?

“Hee-Haw?” Victor read aloud, looking at the faded writing on the tape cover. At some point one or more individuals had simply recorded anything. Everything.

The overalls-people sang _Gloom, despair and agony on me. Deep, dark depression, excessive misery_. There were sorrowful, maybe drunken moans between verses. It was goofy, but…

“Jeepers.” Jefferson said.

Victor popped out the tape. It was too close to the bone, just at the moment. Even with the overalls and donkeys. He fished around, sorting between an already-looked-at stack and a yet-to-be-investigated stack. He came up with A Clockwork Orange. It took very little time to realize it was another brain-warper.

Still. It was compelling. He tried not to think that perhaps, one day, Peter would grow into the movie’s main character and narrator. Rolling in ‘ultra-violence’ and hanging out in ‘milk bars’, where the beverage of choice was squirted from the nipple of a mannequin-like vessel.

He and Jefferson sprawled on a musty loveseat together, hauled from a corner of the room that was soft with dust and insect corpses, all turned translucent. Sparkly corpses.

Victor stole glimpses of Jefferson, who was Too Fucking Pretty. The thick curl of his eyelashes, the pout of his mouth. The dimple in his chin. It wasn’t right. Of course, he held Simon. The rabbit was trapped in a tight hug to Jefferson’s chest. He moved up and down with Jefferson’s breath. Moving images from the television made flickers and shadows against Jefferson’s eyes. His eyelashes cast shadows.

Victor had woken in the night, hearing a shift in Jefferson’s breathing. Not quite a snore, but a deeper breath, ragged. He’d turned over and realized that Jefferson’s thumb had found his mouth.

Brain. Warped. It gave him such bad thoughts. Before the thoughts were even coherent, before they coagulated into true image, he’d gotten hard. It was ridiculous. Jefferson drooled onto a pillow and hugged a stuffed rabbit. He was a disaster. How was he ever going to make it, out in the world? He could hardly scrape through the manufactured world of high school.

Why must Victor look upon the clear evidence of Jefferson’s deficiencies and feel turned on?

For a moment he’d just watched; Jefferson’s deep breathing and the loose hold on his thumb. The shape of his mouth, fingers in a curl on the pillow, the derelict thumb hidden. Oh, let him, he’d thought. Things are so weird. If a sense of unreality was a trigger for Jefferson, a stressor… well, the floodgates had opened. Victor was feeling pretty jumpy, himself, and thought – why not let Jefferson have his thumb? Really, what could it hurt? All said, it was better than turning to drugs or eating disorders or whatever.

But then he thought of how hard Jefferson had worked at trying to overcome his babyish tendencies. His sense of accomplishment when he was able to get through the day without a furtive suck, one hand feeling over Simon’s floppy ears.

It was this, Victor thought, that was getting to him in a really inappropriate way. Jefferson was so tactile. His oral fixation, his other hand always wanting to feel something, usually something soft. Already distracted by Jefferson’s prettiness, Victor became aware of, sensitized to his tongue, lips and fingers.

Whether Jefferson realized it or not, he was an extremely sensual creature. He was worse than the girls. He scooped tapioca pudding up on a finger and stuck his finger in his mouth, tongue curling up around it. He was driving Victor batty.

Victor had slowly pulled Jefferson’s thumb from his mouth, out of respect for Jefferson’s ambition to be less weird. Just like the Shelter babies, Jefferson had smacked his lips together in a soft, seeking way. Whammo; inappropriate thoughts. Warping of young, malleable brain, still developing _. I could give you something to suck,_ Victor thought. Deep parts of his body throbbed with want.

Then, oh. The guilt. It was just the sort of thing Hyde would suggest, rude and moronically obvious. How could he objectify his damaged friend like that? Well, apparently it took no effort, whatsoever. A sudden lack of blood-flow to his brain made it all the worse.

The movie, like so much they’d unearthed in the old tapes, became more than a little suggestive. First, the beverage boobs, then there were clearly phallic popsicles. They made Jefferson grin and were a challenge for Victor. There was a fast-forward edit of who knew how much sex. The narrator and two girls; the popsicle girls. It was kind of a flesh-colored blur, a little comical and filmed in a manner to induce cardiac arrythmia.

Victor watched a warm blush appear on Jefferson’s cheeks. Uncomfortable, he snorted at the screen. He supposed it could be worse. Had they been viewing gay sex, geared for comedy or otherwise, he wasn’t sure how he would handle it.

Jefferson said, “Wow. That guy has some stamina.”

“I dunno.” Victor mused. “I think his eyes were bigger than his stomach.”

When the girls weren’t involved in the fast-motion sex, they looked bored. Meanwhile, the narrator was like the squirrel in Over the Hedge. His nuts were buried all over the damn place.

“Do you think that’s how David and Mary Margaret did it?”

Victor smiled. He shrugged. Sex as orchestrated by the William Tell Overture? Could be. Then he felt wrong for speculating, as both parties were somewhere unfathomable and the goblin who was the spawn of their union was stuck here, parentless and annoyed.

Jefferson asked, “Do you think Lacey and Hyde are doing it?”

“I hope not.”

Jefferson turned, giving Victor a surprised and somewhat sharp look. “Why?” he smiled oddly. “Do you like her?”

“No. I mean, yeah, but not like that. I just mean… Hyde. I don’t want Lacey to end up pregnant, too. Or get crabs.”

“Fleas.”

“Mange.”

Then Victor felt bad for _that_ , as Hyde was also out there, somewhere. In harm’s way and trying to help. He couldn’t seem to have one damn thought that wasn’t, somehow, wrong.

The movie’s narrator and his gang wore cod pieces. The word ‘cod piece’ became ‘cock piece’ in Victor’s head. He thought, well, sure. Why not? There was a very large penis sculpture. Art, it would seem. All of these things knocked up against Victor in alarming ways, even as he soaked in the social experiment of the story. The imagery got to Jefferson, too. He said, “This movie has a lot of dicks.”

“Yeah. But, boobs, too.” A lot of those.

Girls from the sixties or seventies wearing flimsy panties. The from-beneath view of anti-gravity boobs was kind of surprising. Those things _loomed_.

Jefferson held Simon up so they were eye-to-eye. He said, “Boobs, too. _Boobs_ , too.”

It made Victor consider. As he was having unsolicited thoughts of the use he might make of Jefferson’s mouth, was Jefferson’s thumb actually all about boobs? That was generally the case in thumb suckery; was it not? Oral fixation, going back to the comfort one received at the breast.

Had Jefferson had that comfort? Had he?

Jefferson laid Simon back on his chest and, out of nowhere, Victor leaned in and kissed Jefferson’s cheek.

_Oh no!_ he thought, shocked to his core. He’d never meant to do it… it was like his body was pulled by an external force. It was like he’d been thinking about it, watching Jefferson’s profile in a dreamy way, but without intention. Then, there he was. Lips soft to the peach fuzz of Jefferson’s face, his head suddenly engulfed in warmth.

He pulled back as quickly as he’d leaned in, feeling the wild heat of his blush. It felt fierce, painful. What the hell could he say?

_Gloom, despair, agony on me_.

Jefferson looked at him, full on, eyes wide and a little feral. He held Simon up; the rabbit was doing the talking.

“ _What_ was _that_? He asked, his voice almost a whisper.

Victor shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” _Appy-polly-loggies_ , he should say, aping the movie.

Jefferson did ape the movie. He made Simon say, “Welly-well-well.”

Was that good? Was it bad? Was it; well, look at this exciting, new development… let’s investigate. Was it: well… what is _this_ happy horseshit? You presumptuous pervert.

“Welly-well-well?” Victor queried. He was mortified, but antsy. He wanted to touch Jefferson and he felt nervous about it. He wanted to kiss him and didn’t trust himself.

Jefferson grinned and it broke over Victor. It was like one of Jefferson’s games; tactile-boy games. He would have Victor close his eyes while he did a light, knuckle-rap on the top of Victor’s head. Then his fingertips would make a slow, feathery trail from Victor’s crown, down and over his face. It mimicked, after a fashion, an egg cracked upon the head.

The feeling happened. There was something like an entity that blinked in surprise, just over Victor’s head. Then warm, tingly waves began to slide slowly down.

“What are you smiling at?” he asked Jefferson.

Jefferson turned back to face the television. He said, “Do it again.”

Victor moved closer. He leaned into the bubble of soft warmth surrounding Jefferson and pressed his lips to Jefferson’s feverish cheek.

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

It wasn’t solid. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t all one thing. There was the forest, the sort of which made words appear in Rumplestiltskin’s head; paleolithic, Neolithic. Swampy origins, hidden, gruesome monsters. There was the forest of fairytale, plush thickets where delicate deer sheltered; where flowers, like dewdrops, shivered on branch and limb. There was open country, which they avoided. Long sweeps of land, rolling and layered hills. The narrow roads that cut through the turf showed raw earth in a suspicious shade of red. The people were long dwindled; in their absence, the land thrived.

It wasn’t all pastoral, nor did it bow to any notion of linear time. Rumplestiltskin thought he walked a rough land with his two companions, but then, very abruptly, it seemed he opened his eyes to a dark, crumbling city. Another blink; he stared up at a huge, dead tree, denuded and scorched black by fire. A black-eyed owl stared down at him. Its head did a sideways ghetto-bob.

Back to the city. It was miserable. If there was truth to the hypothesis that Faerie was the Land of the Dead, then the city through which they crept was a pocket of Hell. The rustic lands seemed fertile, but empty. The city teemed with people and was sterile. Its people had forgotten themselves; they were only instruments of want and need.

Mostly naked, they lurked alone or moved in frightful packs. Their faces seemed blurred, shadows suggested eyes and mouths. Rumplestiltskin could feel the tension, tight, humming wires that extended from Hyde and David. They were right to feel it. One mustn’t meet the shadow eyes of the mindless people, lest they quite suddenly become mindful. Hungry.

The sun seemed not to exist in the loop which was the city. They must find their way out of the loop. Surely Peter did not bring Mary Margaret to the foul and dank streets upon which they traveled; stagnant water in puddles and potholes, damp mildew on the walls. The population would tear her apart, so much pink tissue paper. They would eat her alive in their thoughtless need.

The effect of _damp_ and _wet_ was inescapable. Hunger had become sheer fetish. Indistinct figures, flesh-colored blobs of nudity frantically sought body fluids. They openly masturbated; so much for shielding the impressionable, young minds in his care. They suckled at genitals and milk-less breasts. The incessant want at belly and sex seemed to produce the endless dark, the steady damp.

Stone crumbled, steel rusted; the worst of the lot bit into flesh and lapped at blood. Things lurked in the dark puddles and, skin fish-like, mouths like sucker fish, squelched in shadow, at the dripping walls.

Another blink, this one assisted by a fierce tug from Hyde’s instinctive senses, and there sunlight once more. It was a weak sun, such as that of the Shelter, a pearlescent glaze. Rumplestiltskin breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t unreasonable to consider Faerie as death. Perhaps it wasn’t always the case, but – oh – how the world wasted. It was rich in magic yet lacked a solid foundation. Only those well versed in its magic could properly navigate the land. Others might simply get lost, losing time, all sense of time. Time, which moved so differently at home. Thus, tales of falling down rabbit holes, coming home to find one was never even missed by family and friends. Dances that lasted one night yet spit the dancer back into his homeland, old and decrepit, at the end of life.

In the fragile threads of what might be called reality, tatters of DNA spirals that magic built in fond mimicry, there was an obsession with fertility. Sex. Blood.

Milk.

They saw a strangely lewd display of three fae boys, perhaps in adolescence. A lone and lowing cow, udder full and teats swollen, and her stiff-legged relief and uncertainty as the boys fell at her, all to suckle. Mouths on be-furred teats or working them, as they worked their own swollen parts. They squirted milk into their mouths, first from udder, then resorted to their own saline product.

Was he simply watching this? Slack and staring? Well, it was hard to look away. Was he dreaming? This was the danger of Faerie… so many dangers, so many ways to be waylaid and all of them fucked with time. They fucked with the mind. Whether having tea with cats and weasels, full china service and heron butlers, or watching in fearful fascination as sex acts took peculiar and creepily hungry shape before one’s eyes, the danger was time and mind. No map, no clock. An abundance of rabbit holes that opened up worlds, stacked upon one another like a deck of cards.

It wouldn’t do. Even with Hyde’s inner wolf and David’s desperate need of Mary Margaret, Rumplestiltskin could feel how they drifted. If it continued, they would each blink to find themselves separated from the others, each on his own strange path. Hyde might find a pack to run with. David might become a pale ghost, dragging chains to rattle at the unsuspecting.

Rumplestiltskin would fall into a dark, dark place, a place where he endlessly objectified the pretty, dark and devilishly handsome rogue of his desire. He’d visited in dream and knew exactly the trap into which he would fall.

Killian was pretty when he cried.

Rumplestiltskin stopped the trek. With his cane, he drew a symbol in the air and the air shivered. The tableau of fae boys and cow wavered; Was it truly there? Or, perhaps it was a clue, for certainly Peter was bartering Mary Margaret as a cow.

With the shimmer still upon the air, he gave a ferocious snap of callused finger to broad thumb. The air cleared. Their heads cleared. No, he was not without power, magic. It was magic harvested from this very place, so perhaps he could be the map, the clock. He could make the land solid.

“Better?” he asked.

Poor David. He’d been through too much, too soon. The fate of Mary Margaret weighed heavily upon him, but he nodded, stoic. His eyes were damaged, his jaw set.

Hyde said, “Yeah, better.” His eyes were sharp. Up went the snout, once more on the trail, freed from the thick and heady illusion of glamour.

 “This way.” He said.

He led them away from the empty field, where once had been a cow and the imps who accosted her.

 

 

 

 

David felt nothing. Or, everything. Landscapes seemed to pass by, light or dark, pretty and fresh, dark and awful. While his body seemed to be nothing but anxiety, he felt neither true fear nor real interest in his surroundings.

_Push on_ , said a part of his mind. It was strange that he could feel that part… the right side of his head, somewhere above his right ear and yet deep within brain tissue. A faint buzz, just there. _Keep going_.

Hyde’s nose was a guide. _Follow your nose_ , said the toucan. _It always knows_. Rumplestiltskin was a dark blur who sometimes created clarity. He was a man-sized grackle. In a suit.

Somewhere else, maybe towards the left and front of his head, thoughts drifted in about childhood stress. Medical studies; the voice may have belonged to Victor. Childhood trauma that altered DNA, got stuck under the skin in a literal way and made one vulnerable to adult illness. Something to look forward to.

Was this what it was to go crazy? When it was said that someone snapped; is this what was meant? One day, mostly normal. Next day; snap. Voices in one’s head. Conversation that seemed away from oneself.

The voices seemed to be his, or influenced by people he knew. Maybe that counted for something.

Then there was an actual _snap_. Rumplestiltskin. It was like Rumplestiltskin suddenly remembered himself. _Snap_! went his fingers. The sound seemed louder and sharper than it should.

It was the breaking of a high fever, ( _meets sepsis criteria_ , said Victor). David, at once, was aware of himself and his surroundings. Yes, he did _feel_ … a cautious fear and a terrible urgency. He _felt,_ and the relief of it was profound.

“Jesus.” Said Hyde.

“Not bloody likely.” Said Rumplestiltskin.

David, surprised by himself, snorted. He looked around. It seemed like he’d been in a horrible circuit, a dream that wouldn’t bend to his will and wouldn’t let him wake. Now… this wasn’t so bad. The situation wasn’t good, but the landscape wasn’t too different from the Shelter’s cliffs. A sprawl of seemingly unpopulated land. Grass, trees, sky. The air was soft, as if swollen with thoughts of rain. If not for the hunt, if not for the unsettling feeling of presence, it might almost be normal.

Hyde said, “Get down.”

I should be a soldier, David thought, for he got down. Zip-zing. There it was again, a compartmentalized bit of brain chatter. He was in the moment; How could it be any other way? Yet part of himself watched and provided occasional commentary. He was annotated. Almost in admiration, he saw himself crouch, upon the instant.

_Good reflexes_. Before he could even decipher the danger, he’d obeyed.

And how weird was it to watch Rumplestiltskin sink into a crouch? Previously, unimaginable.

He scanned the openness from a line of ragged and frothy trees. In part, he felt relatively safe, yet he also felt that the trees, Ent-like, might betray his presence. Skulking through the land, dealing with fear took a certain amount of faith… But, in what? It was like faith, itself, was an entity. Take it on faith. It was that part of himself that plodded on, repeating, _it’ll be fine_.

Riders appeared, headed across the openness. Grassy plains which in no way suggested wild horses or buffalo. Everything was too soft. An almost silent sense of chiming persisted; a murmur of chimes, felt in the bones and teeth.

Perhaps they had a scout. One rider rode well ahead. What the hell was its steed? David couldn’t say. Roughly horse-sized, it was lizard-like. He thought of the primeval place in which they’d first come through, the sense that dinosaurs lurked. If a dinosaur could be said to lurk.

The steed was neither dinosaur nor dragon, but maybe a distant cousin. Its head and long tail swayed in opposite directions as it walked steadily on. Its eyes, like softballs, were shining jewels with a narrow slit of dark pupil… David could make them out, even at a distance.

The lizard was saddled and bridled and the rider was all wrapped-up. The effect was sort of Eastern, Lawrence of Arabia, maybe, yet the clothing seemed rougher. Rough fabric, maybe some fur. Head to toe, the rider was swaddled. He or she wore goggles and a close-fitting hood; the hood trailed back to a narrow point, a take on a nightcap.

Several yards behind, following in the lizard’s wake, came a host of other riders on other mounts. All of the saddled creatures were, give or take, horse-sized, but there were no horses. There was something like a bee or an ant. There was a lama-camel thing, and yet; not. Did it have an extra leg or two? A small sort of elephant. More lizard-like creatures.

David became aware that the group was accompanied by creatures, overhead. Were they guards? Pets? They were almost invisible, blending into the very air. Now pale blue, now silver-grey, now gone, altogether. It was like a flock of birds, but they were far more similar to manta-rays, eagle rays and batoids. They glided in air, only occasionally giving a slow flap of their wings. Or fins. The air was full of currents, invisible until David focused in a new way. The bird-rays rode them.

His gaze moved back to the riders. They clustered close together; in formation, they made a rough circle, protecting something at its center. There was a break in the outside ranks and he caught a glimpse of dark hair, black as ebony. Skin as white as snow. He felt as if pricked by needles, on the inside; an ingestion of angel hair.

“There they are.” Hyde murmured.

 

 

 

 

Well, now what?

It was so different in this other place. Hyde didn’t merely mouth-off about a wolfish heritage; all myth, given the brevity of parental involvement. Balls and bravado. He _was_ a wolf; let it be known. He’d smelled Mary Margaret and Peter before he’d seen them.

This was saying something; the specific path of scent within all the other scents. His nose was suddenly all of the world. At home he made a practice of strength and awareness, alert to his surroundings. Here… senses blazed.

Did David and Rumplestiltskin feel it? They were looking to him to forge the path, so… maybe not.

Scent was everywhere, rich with information. It registered with Hyde that magic had a scent. He realized he’d been catching a faint whiff of it at home, unaware of what he scented.

Here, it was a spicy scent. It was licorice and cinnamon, yet also basil or wild onions. There was a sweet, smoky component, so that he thought of incense.

It filled the air. He could almost see it and, weirdly, he was seeing numbers. Or, he thought he was seeing numbers. The sent would spike and, for a brief moment, it was as if the air was filled with semi-transparent numbers. A sea of nines, or eights. A short burst wherein he waded in threes. The scent seemed subtly different, depending on the number.

There was the scent of magic, the myriad scents of the land, itself, and the people. Or… the inhabitants. Not all could be solidly identified as people, yet Hyde was certain they took note of he and his party.

He didn’t think David and Rumplestiltskin had yet taken notice of this faction of Faerie. Peering from holes in trees, from branch and root, from between leaves were the intelligent eyes of rabbits, birds…. Creatures not unusual, who yet regarded Hyde as if making calm assessment. As if they might speak, or aim a weapon.

Alongside the recognizable fauna was a population less nameable. Faces like bats, maybe. Or somewhere between human and lemur; odd rodent. Some, like the numbers, were nearly transparent. Some were solid and furred, strengthening a feeling of person-hybrid.

All of these hidden inhabitants seemed very aware that strangers were in their midst, but Hyde felt like they were merely observing. No alarm sounded. They didn’t raise his hackles, as did the riders.

The riders were different. Their scent was sharper, as was the scent of the magic around them. Hot metal and the scent of some sort of cleaning product. Lilac, vaguely sexual. It set barbs in his throat and tightened his balls to his body; it spider-walked over his skin, making his hair stand up. Soon, he would paw the dirt and whine.

Encircled, protected was the rose-water, soft honey scent that was Mary Margaret. Much changed with motherhood, she also smelled of a sugared, oddly melon-scented milk.

She was perched on a bizarre lizard mount, a rider behind her, holding her in place. Just beside, Peter was in a similar situation on his own mount. He smelled of burned-hickory dread. Hot pencil shavings, a chemical burn. He’d never carried such scents at home.

David, the fool, started to move forward. Hyde grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back down. Numb nuts.

“They _have_ her.” David hissed.

Hyde, of all people, knew the ferocious drive to plunge in, guns blazing. Yippie-ki-yay and so forth. However, their only real gun was Rumplestiltskin. His magic… and maybe his brokering skills.

“They have too much magic.” Hyde growled. What a weird thing to say out loud. He looked to Rumplestitlskin for confirmation; his guardian gave a curt nod.

Crouching, David said, “Yeah, and when is that going to change? Come _on_ , we have to _get_ her. Get her away from them.”

Far more calm than David, Rumplestiltskin rubbed his cane in a gesture that struck Hyde as almost masturbatory. He said, “Now we know where she is, we can stay on track. We have to take a moment to think, to plan. Or this is all for naught.”

Hyde could feel vibrations coming off of David as the riders moved into the trees that bordered the long field. The semi-invisible bird-fish seemed to melt into them. Sometimes a ray-shape showed in the boughs, made of various shades of green and bristling with leaves.

As the last lizard tail swished out of sight, David gasped, his hand to his chest. He looked sick to his stomach. For a moment, he looked much older.

“Okay.” Hyde said, standing. He wanted to get in the long grasses, catch some more scent. “Let’s move.”

The others stood, rather pleasingly heeled to him, but a new voice said, “You don’t want to do that, my friend.”

 

 

 


	25. Chapter 25

Behind them stood a child-sized crow and Glinda the Good Witch. It was wildly disorienting; even Rumplestiltskin seemed to sway, leaning heavily on his cane. His eyes, so very guarded, roamed over the pair.

It was not truly Glinda, Hyde managed to think, somewhat apart from his own thoughts. It was only that her dress, a bell-shaped, wedding cake topper, was so frothy and full of iridescence. Not the sort of thing one was likely to miss in the rural landscape, and not at all like the rugged and rather raw clothing of the riders.

Her hair was long and seemed more white than blonde, yet more iridescence, but her face was young. Enormous, doe-dark eyes looked at him, _into_ him, and Hyde almost instantly placed the witch, the woman among the ranks of the Sunmaid and Mrs. Butterworth. She radiated an empathy he very nearly could not bear. He had no word for the feeling. It intruded, and yet filled him with a validating sense of being _known_.

The crow, her polar opposite, inky blackness to her gossamer and pristine white, wore a ball cap. Hyde lifted his chin, assessing and wondering if he’d lost it. He could not say that he’d smelled _this_ coming. Maybe Rumplestiltskin had succumbed to Faerie. They were going native.

The crow wore a grungy ball cap and a rusty-red t-shirt with a faded logo of some sort, (?), sleeves cut off to allow for wings. On what must be hoary and clawed talons, he wore scuffed work boots in a deep brown. Paint splattered chinos covered his bottom half and a fat cigar was clenched in his beak, jutting from the side of his jaw. His black eyes gleamed.

It was he who had spoken.

Surprisingly clear, Rumplestiltskin addressed the woman, who sparkled. “Madam.” He said. He made a slight bow.

Should he bow, Hyde wondered? He looked to David in question, but David’s return look held no answers. He appeared to be twitterpated. If she was of Sunmaid ilk, he should bow. Instead, he looked steadily at the two figures and felt insanely untethered.

“You mustn’t go into the Deadlands.” She said, echoing the crow. “You haven’t proper protection and will only lose yourselves.”

Hyde glanced at David again, whose jaw was set, face stoic and stony. Were they not already lost?

Deadlands.

“Our friends and family are the captives of those who traveled the Deadlands.” Rumplestiltskin held out his hand, palm-up. “We must follow.”

A chill raced over Hyde’s skin. _Family_. Rumplestiltskin referred to Mary Margaret as David’s family. God. Or, did he refer to Peter? Did Peter, in some way, belong to Rumplestiltskin?

“Won’t do you any good.” The crow said, a guttural rasp that approached Hyde’s growl. “You go in there, you’ll forget all about your people. You’ll be riddled with ghosts and spend the rest of your days brooding over the bones that litter the ground.”

“Crow is right.” Said the woman, her voice lilting and modulated.

She sounded like no other woman Hyde had ever encountered. Her speech was formal, yet sing-song. “Instead, come with us. We’ll find a way to help you.”

David took a step back. Hyde, rapidly approaching an unpracticed state of worshipfulness, also felt the intrusion of an abrupt wariness. The world of Faerie was too hard to read. How could anyone be trusted? He tried to take a subtle sniff. Could he smell trustworthiness?

Rumplestitlskin looked intently at the unlikely pair for several silent moments, then agreed, “Alright.”

“No.” David said, voice soft. “We can’t. How can we trust anyone, Rumplestiltskin? How can we leave Mary Margaret?”

“This is currently our option for getting Mary Margaret back.”

David looked wretched. His brow furrowed and his hands rose, wanting to wring. Or strike. Hyde knew the feeling. To Hyde, it looked like he was going to lose his shit in a monumental and meaningful way. Color mottled his cheeks and jaw, jaw in a quiver of uncertainty, unacceptance.

The woman moved – glided – to David. It happened quickly, more quickly than Hyde would have expected. Arms up, like a dancer, hands turning on her wrists with curious grace, she was suddenly before him. One hand lowered and cupped David’s jaw.

The effect was immediate and soothing. David’s breathing regulated. His brow smoothed and heat seemed to drain down his body, seeping from his legs and into Faerie. He anchored.

Hyde could feel it as well. For a blip of a moment, he imagined his head lay in the lap of the Sunmaid, who smelled always warm and sweet. Fingers that bespelled and healed stroked through his ragged hair and caressed his scalp.

Dog-like, he shook it off. Still, the feeling was potent. Even Rumplestitlskin appeared to unclench.

“I am Mirana.” The woman said. She looked at David, who gazed back, calm, but addressed all of them. “And this is Crow Singleton.”

A curt growl from the cigar-free side of his beak, Crow said, “Pleasure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone thinks they recognize The White Queen from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Mirana of Marmoreal; yep, there she be. I had in mind a figure somewhere between Hecate and Mother Goose. When pen came to paper, there was Mirana and a Crow; not too surprising, I guess, as I've written a version of Mirana before. (I'm a sucker for a glitter queen).
> 
> I was reluctant to make her official in tags or present this story as a cross-over, because I don't think it is one. She's very much out of her Alice in Wonderland element; just another denizen of Faerie.


	26. Chapter 26

Dreams seeped from the Cupboard Under the Stair. Emma was right; it had remained closed to portals. Babies who scooted roller-seats into its open door were left to consider the dark slant of its ceiling and the coiled nozzle of the vacuum, a known creature whose voracious mouth, like the X-Men, was hated and feared.

Nevertheless, dreams, or perhaps magic seeped, but the seepage was felt as dream and a drugged sort of daydream.

Vulnerable to such things, Jefferson felt it first. Magic coiled and twisted itself into a darkness and brightness of vines. Jasmine, honeysuckle, moonflower and passionflower. Sorcerer’s violet. The vines traveled invisibly from the cupboard and snaked their heady way to Jefferson’s bed.

_At last!_ they breathed upon seeing him. They exhaled scents of honey, lemon, fizzy, grape-soda, sugared cream and a fresh, green sent of dew. They exhaled a scent of wine, so deep and woody, its red was nearly black. Narcotic in nature, they breathed their scents upon the sleeping boy and rabbit, wrapping themselves around him.

_Oh, you belong to us,_ they said.

It was he they sought, the wide-eyed and pretty thing whose attendant rabbit spoke in his head. In their hearts he wore a crown of holly and was naked for their soft caresses, for the touch of petals and the pollen stain of their frilly anthers.

By proxy, they moved against Victor. He was in the bed of the boy they sought, alien to their desires but tied to their boy.

Magic settled over Victor like a soft net and he dreamed a dark landscape. He was a grown and very strange, pale man within a dark and seemingly barren land. Alas, he was alone.

Like Rumplestiltskin, he patrolled the cliffs’ edge and stared down into a bleak restlessness of cold ocean, gun metal blue-grey. He was stark and rawboned, his mind ticked away to itself, counting and recounting.

He came to see a figure on the rocks, below, nearly lost in heaps of kelp. Closer, a woman. Dead, surely. In death, her skin was fish-belly white and so cold. Bruises formed; blood congealed beneath her skin.

A revenant, himself, a scarecrow, a thing that knew hunger and yet had forgotten feeling, he carried her to his stoic fortress of rock and mortar. Within, machines of his own making, vile, amniotic baths. Books were spread all over his bead; he slept upon them and their words saturated his skin. He could never rest, _tick-tick-tick_.

He would bring her to life. If it meant chopping off her hands and feet, the first to wither and rot. If it meant harvesting organs for those that now failed. He would do it, and all along ignore the far-off shriek of the leathery and sloe-dark dragon whose wings stretched always overhead, blocking out time and light.

 

 

 

 

Ruby dreamt of wolf-girls. _Surprise!_ they grinned, for she hadn’t realized. Hyde was the wolf, after all. He wolfed-out and bequeathed wolf-hood; he practiced wolfery.

_Pft_ , said the girls. _What does he know?_ He played pretend and kept up a good defense against the world, but the wolf-girls simply _were_. They could be no other way.

They lived in an underground world and the soles of their feet met the earth where the soles of Ruby’s feet met. They lived upside-down, reversed. Their steps were her steps.

_Sister_ , they called Ruby upon visitation. How like her they looked! She had family, kindred; she’d known, all along.

_What big eyes you have_ , Ruby marveled, and they held up a mirror to her. So long had she hunched to shrink from her own height, swallowed her own voice and lowered the gaze of her eyes, she hadn’t noticed.

What big eyes she had! The better to _see_ , said the wolf-girls, if only you will _look_.

She looked. They pet her, a far more sensual experience than the quick and greedy gratification she’d sought with Lacey. They stroked up and down her arms, along her back and she _knew_ she had fur, on the inside. It yearned to them, the girls. One day it would come out.

Wild in the woods, she ran with them. Like the wolf-girls, her long and inky-dark hair became tangled with leaf and twig, with feather and dirt. It was pleasing; Ruby gulped down the scents of earth and air. There would come a time she would scent blood, and the marrow of her bones grew feverish with the knowledge.

The full moon arrived, ( _fool moon_ , smiled the wolf-girls, showing canines with feral glee), and the girls sang.

_We have no names, we are lost girls. We are wolves. OWWwwwwooooOOOOO_ ….

Ruby sang with them, holding hands under bright moonlight. Words came from nowhere, filling her up with howls.

_When the blue gets bluer and you’ve lost control, you can find it all in your soul, sweet soul_ …

 

 

 

 

 

Emma left her body. _Poor thing_ , she thought, looking at its curled form, next to the long sprawl of Ruby.

Poor thing, out of sorts, Rumplestiltskin would say. She remembered Killian saying she was beautiful and the spirit who was herself shivered.

She was out, on the loose. _Running ‘round loose in the world_ , said Tom Petty in the voice of Stevie Nicks. Another voice said, _wild thing; you make my heart sing_. She was free.

Leaving the scene of three sleeping girls, (three imaginary girls?), she went directly to The Cupboard Beneath the Stair. Her path was immediate, as immediate as could be thought. _Cupboard_ , she thought, and was there.

Like Hyde, she sniffed. Like Killian, she frowned. She could be a tracker. _Tracker jacker_. _Master blaster_. Voices of women-warriors. _Two men enter, one man leaves_. Too much time around Victor and Jefferson.

From the Cupboard drifted the scent of magic and dream. She smelled the spicy-sweet scent and knew; magic, dream, other places.

It wasn’t sweetness and light, though. Those things could be found, but so could the rot-stench of death, the sterility of stone, a labyrinth in which one could waste away all of one’s days. Instant replay, set on pause and studied, endlessly looking for clues.

Illusion. It was heavy on the air, trotting through the Shelter like a Black Shuck. She could see, very faintly, vines that crept from the Cupboard and went on the prowl. _Oh, Jefferson_ , sighed the errant vegetation. Emma wondered why.

Something called her. It had woken her spirit and tugged it free of her cumbersome body, so uncertain as to its identity. So fucking sick of love. _Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love_. Was that something she knew? Were apples a source of comfort?

Red, poison apples. Apples that were a forbidden fruit and brought about exile from Eden. Golden apples of discord, tossed into the fray by an irate goddess, hell-bent on war. Hell-bent apples. No, the author was mistaken on the subject of comforting apples. Love, though. It made a body sick.

_Emma_ , said magic, quite apart from the swoon of bewitched vines. _Emma_.

Why was it Rumplestiltskin she saw in her mind’s eye? Her gut, if such an instinctive set of organs could be at play in a body of spirit, was certain there was a warrior or warrioress who called her name. Perseus or Balder. Artemis or Wonder Woman. The Avengers were assembling.

Instead, Rumplestiltskin’s shrewd and sly face kept popping up in her head. _Hello, dearie_. Hands aloft, he spoke with them in curt gestures. Flat-palmed slash-and-cut. His eyes spilled over with amusement and danger.

_Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen_.

Yes, stealer of children. Who had he stolen? It was Peter who had taken Mary Margaret.

She saw Rumplestiltskin telling a ghost story to the Shelter babies; the little girl who found a bone in her path and took it home to use for broth. She placed it in her (cupboard!) and went to bed.

…. And was woken by the Voice. _Give me back my bone_.

On went the tale. The girl cowered in her covers. The shutters rattled. Rumplestiltskin’s voice got louder and spookier with each demand of _Give me back my bone_. He was the mad wife in the attic. He was the amorphous, slimed thing in the crawlspace. It was he; He was the ghost.

Until; babies hanging on his voice, which had grown in volume and then grew ever more hushed; carefully, slowly, the little girl peeped from her covers. She sat up her bed, eyes round in the darkness. Braced, she opened her mouth and said…

**_TAKE IT!_ **

As much as they could, babies jumped. Eldritch baby-gasps as they thrilled in the glee of being righteously startled, though it was certain they knew the tale by heart.

In her mind’s eye, Rumplestiltskin looked up from the babies and his dark eyes made a shockingly merry twinkle as he looked directly at her. Emma’s heart went through a small, but alarming spasm. Or, so it seemed to spirit-Emma.

His mouth did not move, but she heard him say, _Take it_.

Coming out of her vision, she found she still stood before the Cupboard. Something shone within. Stepping inside, she found a metal, five-pointed star, laying on the wooden floor. It shimmered with a soft glow.

She took it.

 

 

 

 

Lacey was a queen. This was just as she had always suspected. However, there were aberrations.

For one, she seemed to be underground, in an underground chamber. From whence came light; who could say? Her throne was an elaborate thing, yet carved of unfinished, unvarnished wood. It was not gold, not gilted… not even cushioned. It was carved into all manner of fauna and spritely thing; faces peeped from foliage, alien and slippery. The arms and back were encrusted with shells, quartz and mirror-like flecks of mica.

Where were her subjects? Where were her _shoes_? Her dress was grand and its satin and velvet were of a deep red, but she was barefoot. The bottoms of her feet were black with dirt. The floor was dirt.

Queen of _what_? One had to wonder.

She felt atop her head; oh, yay, there was a crown. Examining it, she found that it, at least, was made of precious metals and gems. It was delicate, more of a circlet than a true crown, festooned with fragile leaves and vines. Silver and gold; red, red rubies that echoed her dress.

“Hello?” She called, for she seemed very much alone.

Peter appeared, and… whoa. This was a very new version of Peter. He was naked. Lacey felt herself flinch, completely unaccustomed to nudity, aside from her own body and Ruby’s. Boy bodies were limited to bared torsos, (Hyde’s, so hairy, didn’t really count as _bared_ ), and the wee boy-bits of classical artwork.

And yet, in her underground setting, she also _didn’t_ flinch. She knew herself and Peter differently, here. She only fretted at the lack of wealth that seemed apparent everywhere… dirt, roots straggling down walls, bare feet, bare boy.

It would figure her kingdom would be impoverished and possibly vacant. She ruled over ghosts.

… Oh, yes. Fully, she realized it. Yes, she ruled over ghosts. Peter had placed the words of Ragnarok in her mouth, and here she was. The realm of Hella. Another day in the necropolis.

“Hello.” Peter said back to her.

She accepted him and did not accept him. She was more than one girl and it was troubling. She worried. One girl dreamed while one was wide awake. One girl sorrowed while another, surrounded by death, was bursting with life.

Red, red, red. Her dress said it all.

Cat-like, Peter came slinking up and settled himself at her feet. The boy in the waking world could be so skinny and childish, but in the ghost world he was eerily beautiful. His skin was pale, alive with moving shadow and light. His limbs were long. His fingers and toes were long, and sometimes Lacey saw a spindly bit of twig, superimposed over a bony finger. Sinew and bone were once dormant branches, but were now quickened and green. Green, as his eyes were green, green, green. He ran hot with sap. He was restless with its slow rise.

A barefoot queen and her naked tree-boy in an underground world that echoed and wavered with ghosts. It wasn’t quite the life she’d imagined, yet Lacey found herself feeling both intrigued and content. She pulled at a red thread, wondering from whence it had unraveled.

Peter lay his head in her lap and she pet his head. Copper curls, gold at the soft tips. Puckish boy, made of magic. They should not have dismissed him.

“Mommy.” He said, a small and quiet sob.

Now, wait.

Lacey looked upon his pale and sylph-like form. She could count the vertebra along his back, alarmingly knobby at his neck. Each bump, (bud?), would unfurl and sprout. Had she _made_ him?

Well, then. She wasn’t a queen; she was a goddess. A creatrix. The world reeled. Her belly clenched with a familiar burden and a questioning space in her head went _click_. There was a sliding into place, an interlock.

Well, yes; Hella. Of god-like and witchy origins. Or perhaps she was more like Eve. In her cocoon of red, her insides rushing with _life_ and _want_ and _passion_ and _recklessness_. All of her life, she’d said, _Give it to me, please, God_. And Peter was a serpent, coiled in a tree of forbidden knowledge and opening his green, green eyes to gaze upon her. He showed her what the world concealed.

But… would the serpent say _mommy_?

“You always tell yourself stories.” Peter said. “It’s a wonder you have any idea at all of what’s real.”

Well, if that wasn’t the granddaddy of all understatements.

Lifting his head, he looked up at her. He opened his hand on her lap, casually intimate, long fingers curling up like an expired arachnid. In his palm were two shining bits of fire.

“I want to give you magic.” He said.

She still petted his head. Soft hair or the tenderness of new, fuzzy leaves; it was hard to tell. There was a fast green all through him, but his colors were late summer, autumn. The yearning, liquid light of a setting sun.

Oh, she wanted to take the magic. She wanted to. If she took it, perhaps her kingdom of stone and bone would burst into life. Perhaps the underground would open up and light would pour in.

Or maybe she would only sink further into story, illusion. Further into confusion… Was this boy a _boy_? Was he lover or son? And who was she, truly? When would her fantastical and fatalistic parentage be revealed?

Had God heard her and sent an angel?

The drops of fire burned in Peter’s hand and Lacey hungered, frozen in uncertainty.

 

 

 

 

_Killian_.

It was the babies. As hushed as ever, without voice and owl-like in silence and observation, they wormed inside Killian’s head and spoke.

No more the rustling voices of leaves, the cooing of mourning doves, the speculative scritch-scritch of mice in the walls, they spoke. _And, oh_ … their Killy could hear.

_Killian, get up and make the coffee. Black as night and sweet as sin. But, no. Rumplestiltskin wants it as bitter as his soul. (But hot-hot-hot, like Killy-billy-dilly)_.

_Black, Killy-billy. Black. Look into its depths and see what can be seen. Have you seen a black egg? A world in negative, all energy sucked into itself like a black hole and then – blip! -gone! Bye-bye baby-bunting, on an event horizon. Whoopsie-daisy. Out of the blue and into the black_.

_Black egg, black butterfly, black poppy, black narcissus. If you want to call out to Rumplestiltskin, kneel down and bang an open palm (for there is only one) to the ground. Hello? Hello? Hello? Be ready for what comes. What may come a-slithering_.

_Make the coffee, Killy-billy, for the Good Ghosts love its scent and drink it down, glug-glug-glug. Sprinkle cinnamon on open flame. The Good Ghosts love scent like we love you_.

_Our furry beast. Our handsome man. Our dreamer of many dreams who surprises us with strength and a river of goodness. Bristle chin, hook hand, zombie-walk. We love thee, we love thee, so_.

_Write words on paper and bury them. Plant them; they are seeds. Doors and Openers. Killy-billy-dilly. You are one of us_.

 

 

 

_Come with me_ , said Simon.

Jefferson had always known Simon’s voice to be an uncertain thing. It was deeply secret, a shadow in Jefferson’s mind, and hovered somewhere between adult and child, male and female.

No more. Simon was all male, his voice grown-up and, for some reason, British. Softly masculine rather than deep, efficient, Simon’s voice said, _come with me, Jefferson_.

Jefferson was pestered and loved-up by foliage. Leaves and flowers tickled at him, even in surprising places. Tender vines snuggled. Tougher, woody vines sought to restrain. It was a cumbersome way of life.

And there was Simon, alive. Really alive, standing on his hind legs and tall enough to reach Jefferson’s knee, covered in a white and silver-grey fur, a pinkish, heart-shaped patch on his belly.

_Where are we going_? Jefferson asked.

_We have to get Victor out of the laboratory. Then; home_.

Jefferson, unaware of the small nubs of horn that had sprouted from the chestnut curls on his head, looked at his friend-rabbit.

Home?

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few references that didn't have their origins credited within the writing: Wild Thing by The Troggs, Hey Hey, My My by Neil Young; references from The Hunger Games, Mad Max, Beyond the Thunderdome, Song of Solomon (King James Bible), and - as ever - Labyrinth (1986), home of the beloved Goblin King.


	27. Chapter 27

Well. This was unexpected. All of Rumplestiltskin’s dealings in Faerie had been with the Riders. Once, their numbers had been far greater. They’d ruled all, their magic once far more orderly.

Now they were wanderers and vagabonds, traveling the land in tribes. Magic was hinkety-pinkety, thumb-to-thumb. Faerie gypsies with unorganized magic, magic in lockets and pockets.

Mirana was something new and Rumplestiltskin studied her with interest. Was she a rising power, in opposition to the Riders? Was she a self-appointed, (self-generated?) queen, or had her entourage of animals and ghostly creatures appointed her?

It became clear that the animals, by and large, followed her, as did the unnamed things, the visible-to-invisible population that seemed, in and of themselves, little bundles of magic. This was the constituency of Mirana, Crow Singleton ever her right-hand-man. (Something felt eerily familiar, and then Rumplestiltskin was embarrassed to realize he saw himself in Mirana, a talking-with-his-hands person of magic, and Killian was his rough and ready, dark and broody right hand man).

She was a strange one, which was saying something. A dusting of powdered sugar, a glitter-sprinkled cupcake, she drifted about in bridal attire with arms lifted, hands delicate and expressive. It seemed impossible that there was any real strength to her play at rulership, unless one noticed the set of her plum-colored mouth. Dark shadows lurked beneath her eyes and she noted all, quietly throwing others off the scent of her power with the soft lilt of her voice and a girlish presentation of ribbons and pearls. In the depths of her eyes, Rumplestiltskin could see the highways and byways of the dead. Curious.

To David, she presented a crystal ball. It was small, it fit neatly in the palm of the hand. It was of polished, smoky quartz, its insides full of fissures and imperfections. Full of smoke. Nevertheless, it fulfilled its purpose. For moments on end, David stared at Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret on a lizard-beast. Mary Margaret escorted by a Rider, his weirdly big hand clenched to her upper arm. Mary Margaret’s eyes shooting daggers at Peter, who was also under escort.

“He meant to trade her.” said Mirana.

“For what?” asked David, his eyes on the crystal.

“Oh… riches. A place in this world. Home. Family.”

David’s eyes left the crystal only for a second, a flicker of sky blue to the dark pools of Mirana’s eyes. It sounded as if she felt sorry for Peter. Unable to feel it, himself, he looked back down. He couldn’t bear to lose sight of Mary Margaret. Peter was an ass, on a grand scale. Evidently, Mary Margaret’s worth was her milk.

“It went awry, it seems.” Said Rumplestiltskin.

“Indeed, it did.” Mirana agreed. “He doesn’t yet know himself. He didn’t understand how very little he means to those with whom he wishes to belong.”

There it was again. Pity? Her voice was sad, even wistful. David looked up, a scowl forming, but felt Hyde’s hand come down on his shoulder. God. Big hand.

Keeping his voice even, David said, “How do we get them back?”

“Another trade, I should think.” Said Rumplestiltskin. “We need something they’ll want more than a wet nurse.”

A now-familiar clenching happened inside of David; organs, various sphincters. His diaphragm squeezed tight to his lungs and he gasped. How _could_ he, that vile boy? How could he even think to take Mary Margaret away from himself and Emmaliana, and make her life one of… servitude? It seemed as if Peter didn’t think of Mary Margaret as a person.

Crow Singleton pulled his cigar from his beak, a bizarre thing to watch, outside of animation. Two feather-tips acted as articulate fingers. He cleared his throat and, when he spoke, David fleetingly saw his blue-black and rubbery-looking tongue.

“We can barter a stud.” He said.

David was baffled. To his schoolyard mind, the word translated to hottie, cupcake, stud-muffin. A nice-looking boy who wore the right clothes and who might or might not be a player. Why would the Riders want one of those?

Crow jutted a meaningful beak at Hyde and Rumplestiltskin smiled in an unsavory manner. Mirana looked over Hyde’s boy-man body with a considering frown, and Hyde looked back at all three, dark eyes like closed windows.

“What?” he asked, his growl flat.

Rumplestltskin laughed.

 

 

 

“A young bull for a dairy cow. I think it’s grand.” Rumplestiltskin said, smile still repellant.

David was going to start throwing punches. Enough with the bovine theme.

“What the fuck?” Hyde asked. Then, to the surprise of his companions, he looked at Mirana and blushed. “Sorry.” He murmured.

“My, my.” Rumplestitlskin marveled. “The problem is,” he continued, “we can’t actually give our young stud away. Although it is true, sometimes one longs to do just that. We’ll need a diversion, a device. A ruse. A way to pull Hyde out of their grasp once Mary Margaret is in ours.”

Settling down in a pretty, puff-pastry manner, Mirana said, “We could use the boy to conceal my magic. To sneak it into their ranks. Once he’s in he could let it loose. It will help those of us, here, in our task.”

Catching on and yet thoroughly desolate, David said, “Trojan Horse.”

“Ah.” Said Rumplestiltskin, tilting his head. He rather liked the glittering witch. Rogue queen. “So, this will benefit your cause, as well?”

“It will.”

There was some reassurance in this, as no one knew why Mirana and her retinue of strangelings would choose to help them.

David asked, “What about Peter?”

 He had suggestions. Take him home, hog-tied and gagged, soon to stand trial and suffer inevitable prosecution. A long sentence in a dank cell with a burly, violent, horny and none-too-pleasantly scented man named Buck. He would be tried as an adult due to the fact that he wasn’t fucking human. Buck is loathsome and reprehensible, but loves his mother. So says his tattoo. He’ll want to teach Peter respect.

As his eyes glittered and he whetted his teeth on visions of Peter, a mouse next to Buck, Mirana said, “He can stay with me.”

Head jerking up, puppet-like, David said, “What? No! He has to be punished.”

Mirana made no response, but looked at Rumplestiltskin. _You know_ , said her eyes. _I do_ , said his.

 

 

 

 

Hyde felt nervous and elated. Yes, it was more than peculiar that a giant crow had identified him as a stud, but it was one hundred percent affirming that the White Witch agreed. He was of half a mind to simply make the deal, no ruse required. Hand over Mary Margaret and then begin his new life of servicing Faerie women. Babies for everyone! _You’re welcome_. Hale and hearty wolf babies and grateful mothers who wanted to keep them. A single dick to act as horn of plenty to the masses, just as the Sunmaid inspired with her overflowing basket. The coveted dick of peace and harmony.

And he, so generous and egalitarian with the fertile gift of his body. Why the hell would he choose to return to high school and the disappointing fall-out of life to come? He’d probably be well treated in Faerie. They’d put flowers on his head and around his neck. They’d fondle his dick, for luck. Tiny pendants modeled after his dick; good luck charms. They’d make statues of him, perpetually erect.

Demigod status. Truly, he was up for it.

But Rumplestiltskin was having a small and untimely fit of morality, go figure. Faerie seemed to be bringing a new zeal to the notion of no child left behind, whereas Rumplestiltskin was usually a bit forgetful of where he deposited one child or another.

There was also Mirana, for whom Hyde thought he might do anything. Be a Trojan horse, whatever. The longer he was near her, hanging out and making plans in the sheltered thicket that was her grotto, the more he knew she wasn’t really like the Sunmaid. Whatever she was, it had less to do with the sun and more to do with death. Ghosts, as opposed to fertility. She was likely immune to the excitement of his horn of plenty.

Instead of syrupy and warm, her scent was citrus, aloes. It was a blue, hidden between shadows scent; geranium and stinging nettle.

None of it mattered. Even if she didn’t have a basket of sun-ripened fruit or a sheath of gold and green corn, she spilled over. Magic and a sweet sort of camaraderie fell from her ever-moving fingertips.

And she considered him a stud. If she wanted to use him as a ruse for her cold variety of magic, so be it. He would rescue Mary Margaret and usher in the Age of Mirana, for he was a stud.

It was like being recognized as a wolf and appreciated as such. By a beautiful (if somewhat weird) woman. Well, and a large, talking crow. The cigar smoke gave off the same chocolate covered cherry scent as Hyde’s cigar-alter-box.

However…. Leave Peter?

 

 

 

 

 

Rumplestiltskin watched Mirana. A witch-queen, wild in the trees. Her advisors and protectors were animals. An enormous goose, yellowish-white, rolled a baleful, spookily human eye up to her. It was an extension of her froth. Upon its back she rode and Rumplestiltskin thought he could hear the bells of Santa’s sleigh.

Holly, juniper, alder; these seemingly sentient trees formed her grotto. Worn statues of old, mostly forgotten deities populated its periphery. Within; mugwort, witch hazel, sorcerer’s violet and Belladonna. Monkshood and foxglove. Moonflowers opened and glowed at twilight. They intensified a hovering scent of lemon-cream.

His cavernous belly became pained with lust and the lust was hunger. The hunger was for power. He’d made his trades and secured his wealth in magic, but Mirana could be an ally. A friend, a familiar within Faerie.

He watched her, admiration in full bloom. With her goose, she gathered up her particular and peculiar magic, so different from all he’d previously known. Crow Singleton oversaw the mysterious stitching of the magic to Hyde; it trailed for a time, his shadow, then slipped inside.

Mirana’s black-nailed fingers moved over Hyde’s arms and he visibly shivered, his skin as disturbed as a fly-pestered horse.

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

How quickly they’d been captured. How quickly the indigenous and powerful people had decided that negotiation was unwarranted.

Peter fell into a deep sulk, a black brood. He felt Mary Margaret’s eyes, heavy upon him. She’d lost some of her fight, mute in the presence of the tall, rawboned people and their casual use of unfamiliar magic. She flinched violently should one of them touch her, but was otherwise still and silent.

_Do something_ , said her eyes. And, oh, he wanted to. But, what? His sulk was a feeling of hopelessness, a logical push to accept their fate. Yet, he could not. Even despairing, his mind ruminated. His eyes searched the very air for cracks, fissures. He had no certainty of what was real and what was illusion.

As with so many things, he’d been wrong about the living conditions of the people he’d sought out. _His people_ , he’d thought. Wrong about that, too.

Through grassland, forest and by a riverbed they’d traveled on all manner of bizarre creature, the muted, warm stench of a herpetarium following in their wake. They’d arrived in a city, of al things, though there was no traffic of cars, no engines; no attendant noise or pollution.

The city was quiet, a ghost city. Buildings were tall, dark and narrow, yet glittered in a pale wash of light. Quarried stone veined with mica, stained glass windows, copper that shone or was long gone to verdigris.

Instead of gargoyles and angels there were enormous warriors, sorcerers. There were statues like green men and hobgoblins, almost in the realm of gargoyle, but foxy about the face. They capered in fountains and peered over the edges of the rooftops. They made rainspouts of their mouths and, in some cases, of genitals or anus.

The streets were both of brick and a smooth pattern of flagstones. The brick was a variegated rust and olive green, much of it covered in moss of emerald green. The same moss grew in patches on buildings, as if nature was always nearby, always on the prowl, never far from magic or people of magic. Tiny fruiting bodies peered from the moss, like eyes.

They were taken to a house ensconced in trees, more encroaching nature, as sumptuous as anything Peter could imagine. He cursed himself for making assumptions. The huts, the mud and straw; was it an outpost? A fort, no longer in use? Did the huts serve a religious purpose?

Who knew? It was only clear that these people, though dressed like wild men, were used to tall beds and soft, feather mattresses. They favored enormous, open double rooms connected by double-sided fireplaces, big enough to live inside. Rough hewn stone made both fireplace and hearth. Wood gleamed and glossed underfoot, broad planks of a reddish tone, and luxurious rugs of fur or a bright weave of ribbon were scattered hither and yon.

Big. Everything was big. Big sofas and chairs of a variety into which one might sink, never to be seen again. Big chandeliers, some a dangerous looking conglomeration of antlers, dripping with gems. Tapestries lined the walls and showed huge and romantic figures, dwarfing the living figures. Peter felt tiny. He and Mary Margaret were like the Shelter babies; small, mute, dependent upon mercy.

It was pissing him off.

Bundle of sticks, his ass. Collection of materials, his left nut. (Which.. could it be an _actual_ nut?). So the hell what? He was real enough, now. No strings and all that. He thought again of the Shelter babies, the wizened raisons who looked upon him with cynical derision. It was because he didn’t know… he’d forgotten himself and his origins. Those little malfeasants were small someones, too. They had thoughts, impulses. They interacted in their silent way, eyes ever making commentary.

They were more than materials and sucked-away, alien magic, and so was he.

He looked at Mary Margaret, a soft statue, prim and stiffly upright on a chair that was far bigger than she. Tall people milled about, unhurried and unconcerned that the captives had any hope of escape.

Despite all she’d been through, all he’d done to her, Mary Margaret was poised. To see the poise caused a pain in Peter’s hollows, and he swallowed against the sudden ache in his throat, sharp at his jaw.

She had her own brand of magic. It was the sort of thing he’d long discounted, instead scenting out the sweetness of Rumplestiltskin’s purchased magic. That… substance?... so recognizable. Tangible. In a true way, Peter could _hold_ that magic, taste it. When he found it within himself, he could nurture it, much like caring for a plant. He could make it grow, splice it to his desires so that it was his, to mold like clay.

Mary Margaret and her… not magic. Yet, yes. Something like magic. He’d registered it not at all. He’d barely tuned-in an ear when she’d expressed ideas of Hope and Faith, maintaining her stance even in the face of apathetic, sometimes predatory peers. She remained steadfast.

That Hyde, made fully of bitter cynicism and rage should have loved her; well, it was senseless.

She felt his stare and looked up, meeting his eyes. Surprised, he found he could _see_ the magic. What was it? Whatever it was, in part, Peter still felt it was useless. It was like when people said _you are in our thoughts and prayers_. Money might be more helpful. Food. Of what use was another’s thoughts and prayers?

Looking at her, he felt something passing between them. Not thoughts and prayers, he didn’t think. Not information or speech. Something in her magic melded to his, and he felt a crippling, overwhelming feeling of shame. Not especially helpful, as magic went. It was not a feeling with which he was well acquainted. Mortified, he felt his eyes fill with water.

Mary Margaret became as distorted as if he peered through a fish bowl. He blinked. Water ran down his face and his vision cleared.

It appeared in his head, the word, _grace_. It glowed within the darkness of his skull, mapped out in a lightning web of neurons. It was what moved in Mary Margaret, what she possessed; grace. It could mean different things, but at least one meaning must be close to something like magic.

It curled around his own magic and made a hybrid. He and she were creating.

 

 

 

 

Oh, it felt fucking weird. For moments, Hyde felt as if he didn’t know himself at all. His body was not his own, his thoughts were a whirling dervish of color and light that sometimes spit out a word.

“Steady on.” Grunt-growled Crow Singleton, and Hyde nearly barked with a belched-up laugh.

It was too fucking weird. He may as well have run off to inhabit a ghost town, an abandoned amusement park, there to subsist on cotton candy and to form a sex cult with the Sunmaid, the Lily Maid and Mrs. Butterworth. He would climb onto his throne, atop the Ferris wheel. He’d carry out ogies in the Funhouse, so that the mirrors would create dozens of participants.

It couldn’t be any weirder than his current situation.

Jesus, how he _felt_ it. Magic, belonging to Mirana and her kith and kin. A goose-riding woman; he may as well have allied with garden gnomes.

The bundle of magic had, at first, seemed unobtrusive. It stretched, thinned itself out, as insubstantial as air. It sealed itself to the bottoms of his feet and traveled along behind him, without complaint.

… Then. Whoosh, and _whump_. No warning. It absorbed into him, through his skin. At first, no big deal. Sunlight, warmth. But very quickly, the natural feeling had become unnatural. Hyde became aware of the cells of his skin as _cells_ , each one a small world that contained a population, cities and byways. Busy, busy, busy. He was made of molecules and it seemed possible they could come explosively apart. There were empty spaces inside himself, spaces between molecules, and alien things might lurk and set up house in the empty spaces, sneaky and subtle. He might be invaded, occupied. He might lose himself, for he was riddled with black holes.

Seeing a wildness in Hyde’s dark eyes, Crow Singleton, with his peculiar, two-feather imitation of a hand, offered him a puff of his cigar.

“It’ll help you ground, get focus.” He said.

Why not? Smoking a crow’s cigar made as much sense as being unexpectedly met with the bounty of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup-covered titties, the Maid-duo busy firing air guns at duck-targets.

He took a deep suck on the cigar, burnt green and dark chocolate. Smoke went down his gullet, ragged and hot. Yes, it was reassuring. It seemed to make him steady. It was a familiar feeling after so many months of sticky, green bud. He blew out sweet smoke and rolled his shoulders. Smoke got in the empty spaces, the black holes. _Settle down_ , it growled at the new inhabitants.

The magic, perhaps in reaction to the smoke, condensed. It was a firm bundle, lodged in a general area between heart and navel. It pulsed, but was not uncomfortable.

Hyde was, however, _aware_ of it.


	29. Chapter 29

They were there in a blink, it seemed. Mirana’s magic, the same organism now living within Hyde, gave them a little push.  Hyde felt it in same manner in which he sometimes felt himself dozing off in class, especially toward the summer. He would feel as if his eyelids dropped, only for a moment, but when his body jerked to full awareness, twenty minutes had passed. A teacher droned on, too afraid of him to comment.

He felt as if his head was heavy with too many dreams, the landscape blurred. He jerked suddenly awake and aware, crystal clear, and found he stood outside of tall gates of, perhaps, copper. Beyond the gates, a heavily treed yard on a city block, a grand house in its depts. Rumplestiltskin stood beside him.

David was there, too, a bit green but prepared to stake his claim on Mary Margaret. Family ties, a daughter at home. Blood bonds, Mirana said, could be as strong as magic. Maybe stronger, but the magic made the ties clear, physical and robust in the eyes of the Fae.

Such statements struck Hyde as depressing; did she not understand she instructed orphans?

The gate was manned by a youngish Faerie. Like the general impression Hyde had of the Riders, he looked rustic, maybe even feral, but his smile was bright and wide as he recognized Rumplestiltskin. His eyes were bright. It was unnerving… Was his delight in Rumplestiltskin for the man, himself? Was it because blood might be spilled over the new captives?

“Rumplestiltskin!” he said, both voice and accent peculiar to Hyde. The voice was layered, a whisper of wind lurked beneath its tone. The accent was a heavy brogue, rough at the edges.

“Indeed, it ‘tis.” Rumplestiltskin agreed.

As the boy’s bright eyes moved over Hyde and David, grin in place, Rumplestiltskin said, “I’ve brought an offering in trade for your new guests. May we enter?”

The boy stared a beat longer, then said, “Wait here.”

Why must he smile, so? He went inside the gate, his hair like a bird’s nest of chestnut curls. Something in his features made Hyde think of Peter, and yet… not. The boy was tall, bone long and muscle ropey, tough. Maybe it was the hint of sun-touched freckles over his cheeks.

While he was gone, a woman and child wandered out to get a look. The woman was also rather rustic, yet seemed glamorous. Wheat colored hair fell in soft waves, braided coils wound at her crown. Her clothing was dove-grey, a shiny silver ribbon around her neck. Her eyes might have been blue, but were so light, it was difficult to say. Bright, like the boy’s; it was as if stark pupils were set in discs of water.

The child in her care looked stunted, listless. It, (boy? girl?), dragged along a burlap sack of some sort of nuts. Sullen, it handed one to the woman who cracked the shell in one clenched fist. Fuck. They both stared, rude and silent, while the child chewed on the meat.

Presently, the gatekeeper returned. He opened the gate wide, his smile still disturbingly broad and full of twinkles.

“Rumplestiltskin! Come in.” said his strange voice.

And so, in they went.

 

 

 

 

Mary Margaret thought she would shout, so forceful was the surge of energy that rocketed from her belly and burst in her chest. It demanded to _whoosh_ out of her mouth. Keeping still, swallowing the almighty surge made her dizzy and nauseous.

_David!_ Dear Lord, how different he looked. _Whoosh_ denied, her eyes filled with tears. She might go home, this might be rescue. It was such a relief, yet she was afraid to latch onto her go-to cache; Hope. For the first time, she feared hope. If the hope was squelched, the pain would be more than she could bear.

She took in Hyde and Rumplestiltskin, but her eyes settled on David and couldn’t unsettle. He looked raw. She’d never seen him look so. He’d always had a ready smile, a diplomatic mildness in his approach. The boy before her was stony-eyed, too hard to read. His fists were clenched and hard knuckled, veins prominent in his forearms. His jaw was tense and his forehead aged with stress.

It hurt. It hurt Mary Margaret that David hurt, and it hurt to be the keeper of all that had transpired with Peter. She tried to block it out; all that mattered was getting home. Everything else could be dealt with, later.

The man who seemed to be the leader stepped forward, witch-woman not far behind. He leaned heavily on her, Mary Margaret had seen. It struck her as odd, since they all had magic. The witch, it seemed, had more than magic. She had premonition, insight into others. The leader sometimes asked her to ‘read the bones’, ( _boo-ahnz_ ). She carried a small pouch of some sort of bones, dangling from her belt by a ribbon.

“Rumplestiltskin.” Said the tall leader, all wild and long hair, glowing eyes of glacier-blue. “It cannot be a coincidence.”

Giving a modified bow, a touch of flourish, Rumplestiltskin agreed, “No.”

Mary Margaret felt another surge. Her guardian, walking and talking. A grown-up from her own world. His voice, known and breathing out _home_. Ornery, crusty and often irredeemable man. How glad she was to see him!

“It is not coincidence. I’m here to trade for your captives. They belong to me; they were stolen.” He cast a dour eye upon Peter, who was silent and owlish. “The girl belongs to this boy,” he indicated David, “with whom she has a child.”

The leader remained neutral, but the witch looked from Mary Margaret to David and back again. Her brow was troubled, a clear turbulence on her waxy face.

“What do you offer in trade?” the leader asked.

Rumplestiltskin, with the flamboyance of a zealous salesman or committed magician, swept his hands over Hyde. His arms reached wide and long, demonstrating the largeness of his offer. To Mary Margaret’s stunned disbelief, he said, “I offer a stud.”

She risked a glance at Peter, unable to meet David’s glassy eyes. Peter’s eyes met hers and, despite _everything_ , there was a clear and present danger of laughter. Peter’s mouth quirked and, brutal with herself, Mary Margaret bit her bottom lip.

The leader saw no humor in it, nor the witch. She stepped forward, her eyes alarmingly hungry.

“You want to give us only one?” the leader sounded off-put. “One, for our two? Why not the other one, as well. He’s already sired. He’s proven.”

“No, his daughter awaits the return of he and his mother. He’s bound to his own world. And, for pity’s sake.” Rumplestiltskin turned back to Hyde, “Would you look at the _size_ of this one? You won’t see his like come this way, again. And he’s proven, not to fret. He’s planted many a babe in many a lass. He’s not one to partner and raise his pups. He’s your stud, sure enough.”

Hyde, secretly virginal, blushed madly. Mary Margaret noted it with surprise. It was strange to see Hyde appear human and fairly easy to read while David seemed almost a stranger, a shell of anger. Peter snickered and Rumplestitlskin’s eyes blazed at him. He settled.

The witch approached Hyde. She touched him.

“Hands behind your back.” The leader commanded.

Hyde obeyed, and what followed made Mary Margaret feel somewhat less conspicuous in her role of milk cow. The witch investigated. She lifted Hyde’s upper lip to look at his teeth, then prodded his mouth open, her fingers intrusive inside. Nearly as tall as Hyde, her eyes probed deeply into his. As she looked, Rumplestiltskin seemed restless. He shifted, good leg to bad and back.

The witch felt under Hyde’s shirt. She fisted her hand in his dark and ragged hair and gave a hearty squeeze to the equipment at his crotch. Hyde looked a touch nonplussed, but maintained.

“Well?” asked the leader.

“Oh, he’s fine.” Announced the witch, a deep pleasure in her thick accent. “He’s a fine thing, a thing of beauty. But… there’s something…”

“What?”

“Something… “ She looked again into Hyde’s eyes, her hands on both sides of his face. One hand moved to take hold of his jaw and she pressed him again to open his mouth.

Quite abruptly, in a fit of social awkwardness, Hyde belched. It was belly-deep, almost the roar of a bull alligator. The witch stepped back, much affronted. Rumplestiltskin rubbed his chin and said, “Em…”

Breaking the hands-behind-the-back stance, Hyde’s upper body jerked forward, both hands gripped to his planked and rippled belly. He seemed on the verge of vomiting. Wisely, the witch took another step back. Then, all Hell broke loose.

 

 

 

 

Peter watched in open-mouthed amazement. Hyde’s jaw seemed to come unhinged. It was abhorrent, unspeakable and yet shockingly bad-ass. _Hyde._ His face contorted, long and gruesome, and he commenced to puke-up… a vortex. A howling, shrieking world of… _what?_ Was it magic? It felt so utterly eldritch, uncommon, and yet so familiar. Kindred. It was alive.

… And, it came from Hyde. It made a long path, a sort of swirling funnel from his abnormally wide-open mouth and into the great room where they were held, a room of cedar, slate, glass and bone. A room of antlers, jewels and fire. Windows, tall and faintly green, looked out upon ranks of trees. The outside lived and breathed, and Peter saw that it leaned-in, curious about the sudden wildness within the great room. He thought the outside was kin to whatever force had come rocketing out of Hyde.

He thought it was kin to himself.

Within the howl and roar, Peter could see faces, shapes. Faces made of trees, birds’ eyes and beaks. Fox-faced beings that were humanoid; serpents, long and muscled and moving like fast rivers. The colors of the funnel were faint, like long faded watercolors. The movement and its shapes were almost transparent, save for the gleam of a black eye, here; a jewel eye, there. Eyes of snow leopards and lemurs. Eyes that belonged on the moon.

Wild hunts, Furies, Gorgons, tempests. A revolt and uprising of terrible magic.

Finally, the narrow tail of the cyclone was out of Hyde. Uncharacteristic, Peter thought, _Jesus_. It was the sort of thing Hyde would say, a casual blasphemy. _Jesus_ , he thought again. Messiah as swear word. It was an exhalation, a disbelief that so much life had somehow fit inside of Hyde.

Hyde was bent over, big hands on his knees, panting and dry heaving. Peter had always known Hyde’s eyes to be so dark, they seemed black; now… they were _all_ black. His eyes had no whites. He stared in a desperate way at the cacophony rising to the ceiling, belly heaving, with eyes that looked like blind obsidian.

The feeling Peter had sensed earlier came back; grace. Maybe grace included figures such as Jesus; who could say? But it was a thing unto itself. Peter knew it, a deep knowing that was simply there, full and nearly wordless. Grace was in Mary Margaret. It caressed a fond hand over Hyde, calming him, because he’d allowed himself to become a vessel for its excruciating power. Grace, raw and uncivilized, ran all through the funnel of liveliness, all through its inhabitants. It sang in Peter’s head, shrill and holy.

It was alien to the Fae. They knew it not and reacted like Nosferatu to sunlight. Everywhere, tall people ducked and cringed, covering their heads. The witch chanted words, spells or hexes, but she shielded herself, crouching like the others. They grimaced, noble faces lined with pain.

Yet, Peter felt only softness. Sweetness. When the horde passed roaringly by, he felt the touch of butterfly wings, the tickle of Lacey’s russet hair. Dandelion seeds and lamb’s ears; all was swaddling and warm.

He stood and moved easily to Mary Margaret. Taking her hand, he walked her to David. Fuck. David was going to kill to death, without question. It was written in his eyes and all over his body. He seemed to coil and rear back, a viper prepared to strike, but Rumplestiltskin put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

Peter saw him mouth _not now_. Only then did he realize the noise of the maelstrom. Rumplestiltskin did not mouth; he was full on shouting, face strained as he tried to be heard over the storm, but Peter couldn’t hear him.

Recovering, Hyde put his hand to Peter’s back and began herding. Herd dog Hyde. He rounded them up into a tight group; Rumplestiltskin in the lead, David and Mary Margaret together, then Peter. Hyde closed ranks.

The magic, ( _brothers and sisters_ , Peter thought), made a force field around them. Even if the Fae came out of their crouched and defensive postures, they weren’t coming anywhere near the foreign brouhaha that protected the group. Thus encircled and ensorcelled, they made their way out of the great room, out of the grand house and out of the now unmanned gates.

As they passed, Peter saw that large-scale illusion had been at work. Glamour. It faded as the Faerie lost their grip upon their own magic and rustic became ragged. People wore scraps of rags, half-naked. Their hair was falling out. They were weak in body, fortified by magic.

They might have killed for an infusion of Hyde into their bloodline or for Mary Margaret’s milk to feed their children.

But, could they have tolerated the grace?

Not far outside of the gates stood a woman who glimmered with a white iridescence. Beside her was a large, cigar smoking crow who dressed a little like Hyde. Stranger things.

The woman touched the back of Peter’s head, her hand a warm, supportive cupping to the shape of his skull. He felt as if he fell into the light-absorbing pools of her dark eyes. That was all it took.

 

 

 

 

 

The silver star was on Emma’s bedside table.  Surely she’d dreamt it, yet she’d woken with the star in her hand, its points pressed to the pink flesh of her palm. The metal had been hot rather than cool.

Since then, she’d kept it near. In her pocket during the day; on the bedside table at night.

It had begun to glow, the light it put off steadily more intense. Her body went on alert, for she knew the glow. It was the glow of the Cupboard Under the Stair.

 

 


	30. Chapter 30

They’re coming back.” Emma said.

She held out her hand and Killian stared at the glowing star, flat on her palm. The glow pulsed, intense and then soft. He felt an answer in the flutter of the pulse at his throat.

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. Over there? I think. I had it after I dreamt it.”

Killian looked at the clear, green eyes of Emma. Hers was a face of no horse-shite. Not, this late in the game, that he felt any real need to dispute the existence of objects that arrived from dream substance and commenced to shed light.

He had begun to remember.

Who was his mother, his father? He had always wondered over both and now he wondered even more. Were they alive, out there? Had they put him into the system, remaining ever unaware that he’d fall into the hands of a wizard?

He still couldn’t remember much of his time with the Others, but there were bits and pieces. The goats on the cliffs, tough little buggars eking out a living on salt-stunted grasses, made him remember the little herds in Faerie. Trip-trapping over troll infested bridges and what-not; polished little cloven hooves and horns, like amber. White, mostly, like the deer.

So much of what he remembered seemed the same as his own world, yet different. Both places had trees, stretches of land… but in Faerie the land and trees spoke in his head, voices like the Shelter babies.

What he remembered with a steadier degree of clarity was Rumplestiltskin. Surely it was none other than he who had delivered Killian into Faerie, but it was also Rumplestiltskin who took him out. Killian remembered him arriving, not at all the well dressed and comely man he now knew, but a wild tatterdemalion. His hair, if one knew, was a clue to his past. The wild flowers and herbs he liked at his lapel. He’d arrived, a younger and terribly jovial fellow, foxy in nature and beaming with the grand and smiling countenance of a born swindler. He’d had a meadow violet in his jacket buttonhole. Killian had been riveted.

_He's a trickster_ , said the lady of the house that fostered Killian. _You have to watch that one_.

He’d watched. Rumplestitlskin had seemed to put off sparks, livelier than the locals. His humor was dry and quite different from what Killian had known, but his smile was ready and surprisingly warm.

It was the warmth that had gotten to him. Killian had known magic and had befriended animals, dear to him, but no one showed him warmth. He wasn’t raised as family, but rather as something like an employee. One day he would serve these people well; until then he was housed and fed. He was put to work. He slept apart from the household.

What was friendship? What was love? In his belly, it seemed he knew. He poured his own feelings of love, of protection and well-wishing into goats and rabbits and chickens. _I love you_ , he whispered, a great secret, into the ear of a black dog with mismatched eyes. She’d looked at him in adoration and placed a paw on his knee. _I love you_ , too, said her strange eyes.

Not until Rumplestiltskin arrived had Killian thought anyone might care for him. To be smiled upon, a hand warm on his back or reassuring on his head; it was nearly more than he could bear. Fragile, he was breaking into quiet pieces.

He remembered Rumplestiltskin preparing to leave and how he’d lost all sense of self-composure. He’d wept, begged; Rumplestiltskin had told him true of this. He remembered his hands, _hands!_ The grip he had on Rumplestiltskin’s jacket as he pleaded, _take me with you. Please don’t leave me. No one cares for me. I’m nothing. No one._

_Oh, you’re a very great deal to them, dearie_.

Weirdly clear, the words. Even now they seemed to ring out, crisp, in cold air. White-grey sky.

But, no. What he could do for them, when he was old enough. That’s what they cared about and waited for. They never took a notion to know Killian as Killian. Not at all.

He remembered being told the price for his freedom. Yes, he’d hesitated. Mutilation. It was not a small thing. Amputation. Anticipation of pain, even horror, and then… forever changed.

What did they do with the hand? He had gruesome imaginings of Fae children, gnawing on roasted knuckle bones. Probably, the hand went into a potion. Maybe they buried it, as Killian buried words, to see if it would bear fruit.

He’d hesitated, but – in the end – there was simply no way he could watch Rumplestiltskin walk out of his life, leaving him to his cold existence. He just couldn’t. He’d allowed for the moment, entirely unbelievable, when his hand had become severed from his body. He’d shivered uncontrollably as Rumplestiltskin’s magic, bartered from Faerie, had healed the grievous wound.

After that, the sequence was again muddied, muddled. He’d returned to his own world, of which he’d had no memory. He couldn’t place exactly when Rumplestiltskin seemed less a wayward, somewhat unreliable father and more a lover. Memories of Faerie had faded to almost nothing, even when he knew it existed. Even when strange babies arrived, small bundles of magic.

Even when, at his core, he knew Rumplestiltskin kept them small, withered, ever sucking away at their magic.

Killian could see, now, the ones who had been taken to Faerie an who were returned. Failure to thrive. He could see the mark of Faerie haunting their eyes, and he could see it on Jefferson.

Watching Jefferson, his need of and devotion to his rabbit, he wondered if it was a body’s defense to forget. Were their minds simply unable to hold onto memories of a place to which they’d never belonged?

Or, was it Rumplestiltskin? Did he use magic to make them forget?

 

 

 

 

 

Peter’s reverence for Mirana was instantaneous. To be near her, to be touched by her. To be in her grotto and watch the strangest… people. Crow Singleton and his cigar, ready to lock and load at Mirana’s say-so. People who seemed hybrids of all sorts of plants and animals. People like ghosts, moving as one, like a calm, dreamy version of Hyde’s vomited cyclone.

To see these things and to be at her side. Shyly, he called her by her name. All the while, he thought; _mother_.

And, _oh-ho_. In the sweetest manner, she bossed Rumplestitlskin around. It was kind of glorious to behold. Rumplestiltskin smiled and allowed himself to be told what to do.

Touching his lapel, Mirana said, “You’ll bring me the ones in your charge. Those infants who are like Peter.” It was mild and darling, but not a request.

“Indeed, dearie. I will.”

“You’ll accept no more changelings from the people of this land.”

“Certainly not.”

Her magic, soft and restorative, seemed to touch everyone. It seemed Hyde was in love, ready to become an ex-pat and take up her cause. Rumplestiltskin held back, secretive as always, but was respectfully smitten. David seemed to have accepted that he might not get to kill Peter; he was slowly thawing back into himself, though he also seemed to hover near any moment in which he _would_ be allowed to kill Peter. Mary Margaret was showing tentative but definite signs of both Hope and Faith.

Grace was still new, strange around and maybe within the body. It felt as if it was the whole of what made Mirana.

She told Peter she’d been exactly the same as him, which sent a thrill through his blood.

She said, “The people you went to are commonly called the Fae, but they are not the Fae. It’s the magic, inherent in the land itself that is Faerie. Those others occupied the land, long ago. They used the magic to make us, so _we_ are the true Fae. We are made of the very substance that is Faerie.” With a surprisingly cheeky grin, she added, “And perhaps an extra ingredient or two. It keeps things interesting.”

Peter watched her move about, arms up, fingers delicate and busy. He understood. He recognized, at once, the way he’d studied people and modeled himself after them. _Hello, I am a person_. She modeled herself after a courtly idea of queenliness.

An expression of grace.

She felt that if the occupying people of the land died out, then it was simply their time. If they lived, so be it, but it would not be by selling off the true Fae for the purchasing of human blood.

She was gathering them, the true Fae. The raison babies at the Shelter would be quite a prize, and she was certain they would grow in her care. With Crow Singleton and her ghostly court, she was creating her kingdom.

“Will you be at my side?” she asked Peter.

Well. It was all he’d ever wanted. It was home.


	31. Epilogue

It was Mirana, with map-like guidance from Rumplestiltskin, who opened the portal back to the Shelter. She honed-in on Emma’s star; a star-shaped, light-filled opening rose up from the floor of the girls’ bedroom.

Of all of her kind, she was the first to enter, willingly, into the Other world. She gazed upon stunned children, her eyes as deep as a seal’s, holding within both joys and sorrows.

Hyde helped her to gather wizened, little, narrow-eyed babies and escort them to those waiting in Faerie. She held the other babies and cooed at them, stunted and wide-eyed creatures. She whispered healing magic into tiny, seashell ears. She touched Jefferson’s head, in passing, he- as big-eyed as the babies – and a tremor went through him.

A collective shout went up as Mary Margaret came through the star, with David.  Ruby rushed up with Emmaliana, her little arms and legs suddenly pinwheeling with joyful recognition. Mary Margaret burst into tears and took her baby. For hours and hours, she could only hold Emmaliana and be held by David.

Killian hung back. He felt so happy, so relieved to see Rumplestiltskin. He was perplexed and mesmerized by the glittery woman in white who glided through the Shelter and made its ancient walls seem tawdry. He watched her make each child feel his or her own specialness with only a touch, or even just a look.

Ruby stood up straight, claiming her height and strength. Lacey, for the first time in weeks, smiled. David and Mary Margaret were sealed into a unit, strong to the point of becoming invincible.

Mirana placed her fingertips under Emma’s sharp chin and Killian could see Emma let go of pain. It was that quick. She solidified, as did they all. Everything was clear, the dreamworld relegated to dream. Those who had always felt unloved felt loved. The light, the magic _wanted_ them.

Mirana kissed Hyde, a soft and sweet press of lips to cheek, and Hyde blushed. He made no suggestions regarding her breasts, nor did he attempt to make a spectacle of his crotch. She smiled at Victor; even this visitor from another land seemed to think, _you little weirdo_. Like Killian, Victor seemed both bewildered and enchanted.

Lacey asked, “Where is Peter?”

Lilting and sing-song, her arms moving as a dancer, Mirana said, “He’s staying with me. But don’t worry, duckie. You’ll see him again.”

She moved toward Killian, but he backed away. Respectful, she paused. She could heal him, he knew. Whatever it was that was broken. Whatever made up her magic, it was healing; he could feel it all through the Shelter. It overwhelmed the scent of Faerie that poured through the star-portal.

He just… couldn’t. If her magic came into him, it would mean letting go. Of what, he wasn’t certain. He wasn’t ready.

A portion of Shelter babies now in her care, Mirana took her leave. Solemn, she shook hands with Rumplestiltskin. So, Killian thought. There is a New Deal.

How strange, the quiet that descended. The portal closed, the scent of Faerie faded to nothing. No one could be loud, celebrate. Each person wanted to be alone; completely alone, or quietly alone with another. Everyone felt changed. Without a portion of its weird babies, the Shelter, itself, felt changed. Killian did not feel unhappy, but he felt hollow; hollowed-out.

He looked at Rumplestiltskin and saw him, clearly. He saw greed. He saw a man who had learned secrets and, with them, cut corners. He had, on a grand scale, cheated at life. It was true even in terms of lifespan; who could say how long he’d been alive? He’d found a loophole and had exploited it, and had harmed others in doing so.

He saw, also, a wizard. Maybe he began as a side-show magician, but that was long, long ago. He saw a strange man of unusual, occult interests who had cared for him, and who never failed to bring him out of darkness, buoyant with humor and a dry observation of the world. He saw a bad man and a good man.

All of these things were true

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

 

Ruby grew up and went adrift. She barely escaped high school and had no desire to spend more time in classrooms or in front of a computer screen. Impulsively, she ran off with a cute boy, seeking warmer and more exciting places. And then a different cute boy. She went from one retail or waitressing job to another, and this remained her pattern until an entirely different cute boy, one who seemed soulful and searching, took her on a shamanic retreat.

It was weird and goofy, Ruby thought. Stupid, if she was being blunt. Not her thing. The boy turned out to be a pretentious snot with a messiah complex. He was all about preaching to her, lofty upon his petard, but never listened to a word she had to say. He couldn’t imagine that there was a brain in her pretty head.

She was on the verge of slipping away in the night, leaving the cute messiah and the Birkenstock crowd to their drums and crockpot oatmeal, when the wolf-girls appeared.

Just – boom. People played their monotonous, no-musical-skills-required drums and spoke of visitations from Brother Bear and Sister Mountain Lion and whatever. Ruby felt like they were all pretending. For escapists, they were shockingly unimaginative.

And yet, within the heartbeat of the metronome drum, the wolf girls appeared in Ruby’s mind’s eye in a way that felt so real, so palpable, she was embarrassed to find herself weeping. Earthy-type people in expensive hiking wear smiled at her and congratulated her. They said, “Welcome back” with expressions of the newly converted. She wanted to hit all of them.

What she wouldn’t give for Rumplestiltskin’s snark. Lacey’s grand eye-roll. Even a muttered _bloody hell_ from Killian.

But the wolf girls had come and Ruby knew she was one of them. It wasn’t just a weird dream in the Shelter. For so long, she’d felt confused as to whether she was running toward something, or always running away.

Now she knew; she was just _running_. For joy, for love. Movement was her instinct, and she wasn’t alone.

Not long after, she managed to settle down a bit, albeit in a restless manner. She found a cheap and ramshackle place in the mountains, a sort of cabin-built-onto-a-trailer. She started recording ethereal, howling sorts of songs. She made a tarot deck of feral girls.

She became a local artist and took in every stray dog who found her.

One day a ragged, little girl ambled out of the woods. Feral. In the aftermath of Peter and the raison babies, Ruby knew exactly what she was. She took her in, too.

 

 

 

 

Emma, Mary Margaret and David all remained in Epiphany. Mary Margaret and David became teachers; she taught first graders, to whom she could and did read fairy tales. He taught high school math and coached a girls’ softball team. On the side, he taught girls and women self-defense.

They both marveled that their daughter seemed determined to overcome every bit of structure and routine they set for her. They tried to give her the very things that had been so horribly missing from their own lives, but she insisted on running wild. She insisted her imaginary friends were real. She amazed them with precocious insights and surprising talents, mysterious in her comprehension of all not seen or spoken.

 

Emma didn’t know what to do with herself. For a long while she worked truly odd jobs. She was a mortician’s assistant, a farm hand, a yoga instructor; she was part of a team who washed the angels and gargoyles in downtown Epiphany. Eventually, she made friends with a group of older women who always hung around The Goblin Market, where she also spent time as a barista.

Without so many words, the women let her know that the definition of ‘woman’, beyond the biological, was not strictly _defined_. It was broad; a woman could _be_ a broad. She could be girly, feminine, stoic, straight-laced… wild or tame, restless or content. She could be gay or straight and, yes, some found they’d been born in the bodies of the wrong sex, not truly women at all. But, maybe not truly men, either. There was room for all and every mercurial in-between.

Within the friendships Emma forged, she began to relax. The glaring, missing piece of her life; parents; manifested in one way or another with each woman. They all seemed to know themselves and to answer to no one, whether or not they were coupled or had children.

Settling into herself, at last, Emma joined the police force of Epiphany. She loved to protect, to keep others safe. She became a sheriff, and she often gazed, lost in thought, at her sheriff’s star. At times, it seemed to glow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victor shot straight through higher education, like a bullet. Every scholarship, every grant he could get his hands on was sought out and attained. His goal was to be a neurosurgeon, and he achieved his goal.

The intensity and travel of his education, internship and residency took him away from Jefferson, or any other close relationship. He felt it heavily, the absence of Jefferson. He was never again to have the sort of friendship they’d had. All of his work associates were just that; associates. Meeting for the occasional beer; rarely was there time for a movie. The only thing anyone could talk about was work.

Eventually, he let himself forget, a little. Kissing Jefferson; what _was_ that? A heavy, possibly horny loneliness? A connection of orphans? Experimentation? He missed Jefferson, the sweet boy with the rabbit. But life moved on.

Magic faded, taking no foothold in what Victor thought of as the _real world_. He high-fived other surgeons, pretending a humanity he didn’t exactly feel, and became a bit of a womanizer. How easy it was… money, status and the reality of precious little time. Women fell into his bed and his job, of necessity, kept them at arm’s length. He was seldom called upon to _be there_ for them, and was a bit out of place when the occasion presented itself.

He began to feel unsettled. He was pestered by dreams… dreams of resurrection, waking the dead. Rumplestiltskin and Killian were abruptly lively in his head, complaining that he would, indeed, raise the dead. In his dreams, the beautiful corpse he had to revive was no longer a woman. It was Jefferson. At least once, it was himself.

What was he doing, he wondered? He was proud of his skills as a surgeon, but he’d always imagined something more like research, continuous learning. Where was his curiosity, his passion?

 

 

 

 

 

Of all of the Shelter kids, only Hyde went into Social Services. Social Work. What a splash he made, shaking things up. The tired hallways, breakrooms and cubicles; the makeshift offices and car trunks full of files and a laptop. This was the province of washed-out, overworked, harassed, jaded and tired people. Once young and fresh, they were quickly weighted and beat down by the evils of the world. Ignorant people who did not care, new generations hell-bent on repeating previous generations, yet all human and requiring help.

Every last person in the profession seriously questioned his or her ability to affect change, idealism often challenged on the very first day.

It brought a body down. It dangerously lowered expectations and one’s estimation of mankind. Quite often, it was a completely shit job. And not well paid.

Along came Hyde. Big, machine-voiced, handsome in a frightful and wicked manner, body bristling with energy and bringing with him a pack mentality; he, the alpha. There could be no one more practical, yet he seemed to spark with magic.

Coworkers both openly loved and feared him, which he ate up, greedily gobbling. Children, especially boys, warmed up to him and hopped-to. It was like a superhero had walked into the DMV and was ready to clean house and get the joint rolling.

Hyde became satisfied with his life, his connections and the effect he had on others. And yes, he found his mate, his alpha female. She, alone, knew who he really was, at his core. He lay his head in her lap and was pet. It stirred up magic, the honey’d scent of magic.

With Mirana’s magic, he’d let go of his search for a mother, whether to be claimed by her or to exact revenge. Whatever it was that made a mother, the Sunmaid’s of the world, it was already manifest, inside him. He was whole.

 

 

 

 

 

Jefferson never left the Shelter.

 _Awwww_ , (you might say), for this could be seen as a failure.

But then, the Shelter was no longer the Shelter. It remained a grand estate, Killian and Rumplestiltskin in residence, odd men who roamed its vast halls and fiddled around in its cavernous, weirdly greenish kitchen.

It remained the Shelter only long enough to get the kids grown and onto their next steps. After Mirana’s visit, the remaining babies began to grow. They found their voices and separate identities. They found homes and families; childless couples who longed for them. Each one grew up to be a writer, painter, actor, singer or somehow completely enmeshed with the creative arts. At least one became a preternaturally insightful psychologist.

For a time, the Shelter was only a house and Jefferson cohabitated within it, a peculiar addition to the only two people who truly knew his story. Sometimes, he managed to leave Simon on his bed in the morning, instead of carrying him along. Although… not always. Simon still had a voice in Jefferson’s head.

Killian, wide awake and restless as the devil, began a farm. Gardens, goats, beehives, chickens; it started small but grew, Killian ever on the move. Jefferson and Rumplestiltskin looked at one another, a little appalled. It was exhausting to watch Killian, what with the building of outdoor structures, digging in the dirt. Excavation and _tractors_ , for crying out loud. Tillers and irrigation systems. The commotion.

Killian was infectious, however. Undaunted by failures, he learned, made copious notes and tried again. Jefferson and Rumplestiltskin joined in the venture; how could they not?

Jefferson became a chaser of chickens and a sheerer of sheep. Notably, he became a charmer of bees. They loved him and made honey just to please him. The three investigated the hoity toity side of farming; microgreens, artisan cheeses, grass-fed butters and cage free eggs. They became part of a farmer’s market in downtown Epiphany, where - on occasion – they saw Emma, Mary Margaret and David. Emmaliana, wild and dark headed, was hopelessly excited over their fancy honey in fancier bottles. She latched herself onto Killian, whom she considered the Most Handsome of Them All, even with a badger-streak of silver in his sloe-dark hair.

It was Jefferson who named the farm. In Killian’s honor, he called it The Hook and Aye.

At certain times of the year there were farm tours, hayrides and such. Spring greens and flowers, fall festivals. Hutches of rabbits that Jefferson raised, available for petting under his watchful eye.

On one such occasion, a champagne colored Mercedes drove up the hills and to the cliffs. The car was unusual for the surroundings; more than just Emma took note.

Holding a white rabbit, its heart a-flutter against his palm, Jefferson watched as the car door opened and a tall, pale man got out. His blood surged and a bright smile lit up his face. He didn’t question even for a second.

It was Victor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lacey made it through Junior College, then began earning a living as a digital copy proofreader/editor. She wasn’t wealthy, but she had money. She had _things_. She had a Smartphone, a tablet, a laptop. She had a desktop computer and an endless playlist. She was fully engaged in social media. She wore a Fitbit and shared online tips for lowering carbs and applying make-up effectively. She expressed herself fully and frequently.

It worked for a time. All of it. Oh, the attention, for which she felt starved. The instant gratification. People flocked to compliment her personal style and eloquent opinions, a-gush with emoji-laden praise. It was lovely. It was _filling_. Often, she felt full.

Her job was such that she could work from her apartment, further enhancing her own world of her own making; and she could also go into the office, there to display -in person- her careful wardrobe and the glossy, healthy shine of her hair. There to smile and be witty, aglow with life.

With no warning, whatsoever, it all began to seem crap. She became filled with an antsy dissatisfaction and found she didn’t feel especially close to her newer friends. They were alright, but she missed Ruby, the feeling of _real_ she’d once known. She missed the casual, lounge-on-a-bed sort of friendship she’d had with Jefferson.

God damn it, she missed Peter. It was difficult even to think of him, for what _was_ he, really? What had really happened between them? The Woman in White had seemed to feel he was worthy, but Mary Margaret, if she’d spoken of Peter at all, called him a demon.

Well, something had passed between herself and Peter. Though brief, it had apparently left a mark. She’d become infected. Despite access to all sorts of once-coveted items, she still wore the stolen earrings he’d given her.

She kept her job, but shut down her social media. She kept her Smartphone, (for she’d lusted after it for _so long_ ), but let go of her laptop and tablet. Without the need to share endless bits of data with strangers, she forgot all about her Fitbit. She stopped inventing herself via selfies.

She thought, out of the blue, of the library in downtown Epiphany and a wave of homesickness nearly crippled her. Funny. Home sickness. Maybe the Shelter had been the closest thing to home she’d ever known. Rumplestiltskin was the world’s weirdest dad. And, (poor Killian), was mom.

People weren’t really going to libraries. How sad. They were barely going to bookstores. The thought got to Lacey and, with new purpose, she cranked her social media back to life.

She did fund raising for her local library and created a Friends of the Library monthly event. She found herself quite unexpectedly reunited with Hyde, (WOW), as she arranged for library book delivery and pick-up at a youth shelter.

For the sake of books and people, she kept up all of her library activities, but she lost her energy, her zeal. This was her way, she dejectedly found. She threw herself into things, she felt on fire with a new project, then it faded, utterly. What was she missing?

But, Hyde. OMG. Hyde, in a suit. It was a cheap suit, more often than not it was a jacket off, sleeves rolled up affair, but still. Holy moly. He was married, which managed to pump Lacey full of an embarrassing amount of affronted jealousy. It made her feel indignant, for some reason. Who was this wife-person? How dare? He’d made something of himself; he was helping kids. Where she felt full of empty spaces, it seemed he had none.

It was so hard not to revert to teenage years. She wanted to roll her eyes at him and say, _Whatever_. She thought he was feeling the same way toward her. His eyes moved over her messy updo, her cat’s-eye make-up and gel-finish nails with, perhaps, judgment. His gaze lingered over the crystals at her ears.

But all he said was, “How you doin’, Lace? Have you seen Peter?”

That voice. Evil robot. What did troubled boys make of him? Did the voice spook the shit out of his wife?

Had she seen Peter? It was uncertain Peter even existed, so; no. Was he off and away, living with Tinkerbell and waving his magic wand?

And then it happened. It happened, in fact, as she walked along the sidewalk with Hyde, each headed for their separate cars, parked in the dilapidated neighborhood in which they’d met. It was her oldest fantasy.

A black Porsche Panamera rolled up, _very_ out of place, windows dark and glossy, almost onyx. The driver’s side window _swooshed_ down with no sound. At first, Lacey didn’t recognize the man who looked out. Not at all.

Father, movie mogul, music industry executive. No. It was Hyde who said, “Jesus H. _Peter_.”

And it was. Bigger, more filled out… he’d grown into himself and yet was still willowy looking. But… the green eyes, the coppery curls. Lacey’s hand absently rose to touch one of her earrings, and the man in the car smiled a broad smile. An imp’s smile, a hobgoblin grin. Yes, it was Peter.

“Hi guys.” He said, a weirdly deep and smooth voice. “Wanna go for a ride?”

Lacey and Hyde looked at one another. Peter unlocked the doors with a hushed _click_. Without thought as to whether this was an ordinary, (that is to say, earthly), car on an ordinary day, or -perhaps – a portal on a day that would prove to be life changing, Lacey and Hyde climbed in.

 

 

 

**_THE END_ **

 

    

    


End file.
